KANITA YANDELL HAD called the Tyson plant again and again, for months, begging them to come, demanding help. She and her husband, Jerry, had been raising chickens for two decades, and they'd never been through anything like the last six months. It was a strange disease, or an industrial accident, or both. It was something gone wrong on a grand scale. The birds were simply dying. It seemed like they had started rotting even while they were still alive. She and Jerry worked 10-hour days, seven days a week. Their labor seemed to do nothing but dig them deeper and deeper into debt. But the Yandells had no choice but to continue working. Their home, their farm, and their livelihood depended on whether the birds lived or not.