Terroir
← All farms

Jidori Chicken (Mao Foods)

Brand/aggregator sourcing from multiple Central Valley contract farms; regional West Coast foodservice.

Southern California / Central Valley, California, USA

CommodityVerified

jidorichicken.com ↗verification source ↗

Commodity

Quality assessment

A US TRADEMARK owned by Mao Foods (Dennis Mao, California) — not a Japanese jidori breed, not a farm, and not a certification. Mao Foods does not raise the birds: it selects and processes chickens from contracted Central Valley growers to its own spec. Founder is on record: 'It's not a breed... it's my brand.' The real differentiator is logistics (delivery to kitchens within ~24h of processing) plus free-range/no-GMO claims, which are genuine but not verifiable through any public registry.

Scale
Brand/aggregator sourcing from multiple Central Valley contract farms; regional West Coast foodservice.
Feed & inputs
Marketed non-GMO; some SKUs marketed organic. No certificate number located.
Animal welfare
Marketed as free-range. No GAP, Certified Humane, or other third-party welfare certification found for the Jidori brand.
Environmental
Nothing substantive found.
Transparency
LOW. No public farm list, no certificate registry entry located, no audit body. Claims rest on the brand's own marketing.

Caveats

GREENWASHING FLAG — the biggest one in our graph. In Japan 'jidori' is a legally-defined designation for indigenous-breed birds (JAS 'Jidori-niku' standard requires >=50% native breed bloodline, low stocking density, minimum 75-80 days). US 'Jidori(R)' borrows the word with none of that. Menus at LAVO, Nobu, Naked Fish's, Palette, Pasta Mia, 888 Japanese BBQ, Trattoria Nakamura-Ya and Bar Boheme read as a Japanese-heritage provenance claim to a diner; it is a California trademark on Cornish-cross birds. Should NOT score as a named-farm claim.

Poultry brand founded in Los Angeles supplying free-range chicken from a network of small California farms, marketed since as premium 'chicken of the earth.'

Products

chicken

Practices

free-rangevegetarian-fedno hormones or antibioticshand-processed, USDA-inspected

Certifications

Mao Foods, Inc. (Jidori trademark owner) holds USDA Organic HANDLING cert 5350000029, certifier SCS Global Services, Los Angeles CA, record updated 2026-07-15 — HANDLING SCOPE ONLY; the Jidori-branded bird is not sold as organic. Do not surface as an organic sourcing claimJidori is a California trademark, not a breed or a farm

Registry match

Matched to a public certification registry — a separate record, not a Terroir-verified supplier relationship.

Served at

Sources

What the quality assessment above is built on.