Stacked onto pallets, stored in containers, and frozen at bone-chilling temperatures,Alabama's chickens feed the world.

Every year, more than 200,000 tons of poultry is exported out of Alabama's state docks in Mobile. It is sent to Hong Kong, Romania, Estonia and Latvia. Alabama chicken makes it way to countries across Latin America, Central America, and the Middle East. 

As much as 50,000 tons of Alabama poultry travels 877 miles from Mobile to Cuba annually. Alabama began shipping the goods to the island nation in 2000 when U.S. government loosened its trade restrictions on medical supplies and food.

Alabama also supplied Russia with as much as 80,000 tons of chicken a year up until the recent embargo.

Russian President Vladmir imposed a one year ban on U.S. poultry in August after American and European enacted economic sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

At its peak, ports along the Gulf Coast exported one million tons of poultry a year from 2006 to 2008.

Ron Sparks, former Alabama Department of Agriculture commissioner, called the port the "heartbeat" of the state's poultry industry. And there are plans to expand operations and ship more chicken out of Mobile.

"Without that port in Mobile, we'd be dead in the water so to speak," Sparks said. "The port of Mobile is part of the heartbeat and the blood system that makes it work."

Alabama's poultry business is booming. In 2012, the Heart of Dixie sold more than 1 billion edible chickens, known in the industry as broilers. That's more than twice the amount the state sold in 1980.

Today, Alabama is the second largest broiler producer in the United States, trailing behind only Georgia. There were more than 173 million broilers in Alabama in 2012 on any given day, and more than a billion sold over the course of a year. Revenue from the sale of poultry and eggs in Alabama exceeded $3.6 billion in 2012.

The Alabama Poultry & Egg Association estimates the economic footprint of poultry, with all the affiliated businesses and jobs, at $15 billion.

"I couldn't imagine the state of Alabama without the poultry industry," Sparks said.

Many of the chickens that are shipped out of the Mobile port are raised on farms and slaughtered in factories in north and southwest Alabama, although the product also moves in from Mississippi and Arkansas.

At the factories, the chickens are cut and sorted into piles of leg quarters, drumsticks, breasts, and chicken feet. Hardly a staple of the American diet, chicken feet are nevertheless an important part of Asian cuisine.

More than 300,000 pounds of chicken feet are shipped out of the Mobile port to Asian countries annually.

In January, China banned imports of U.S. poultry amid reports of strains of avian influenza found in the Pacific Northwest. But Jimmy Lyons, Alabama State Port Authority executive director, said the state ships a negligible amount of poultry to the far East country.

Before chickens can be sent anywhere, the parts are packaged, put on pallets, and moved onto refrigerated containers that semi-trucks haul. Diesel-powered generators, loaded onto the container trucks at APM Terminals in Mobile, keep the containers at -4 degrees. The chicken is trashed if its temperature exceeds 50 degrees when it arrives at the refrigerated warehouses.

At one point, there were refrigerated warehouses in Gulfport, Miss.; Pascagoula, Miss.; New Orleans, La.; Theodore, Mobile, and Pensacola. However, the locations in Theodore and Pascagoula closed, and Hurricane Katrina blew away the warehouse in Gulfport.

Mobile's biggest competitors with a refrigerated warehouse are in New Orleans; Savannah, Ga.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Charleston, S.C.

Americold, a private business located at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, and Seaonus, a partner of the Alabama State Port Authority, run the refrigerated warehouses in Mobile. Pallets of the chicken are unloaded off the containers into the refrigerated warehouses, which can drop as low as -40 degrees in 20 hours - cold enough to take a person's breath away.

Americold stores it products offsite. At Seaonus, the chicken is stored on a 125,000-square foot refrigerated warehouse on the docks. Stacked four a time, the pallets reach about 16-feet in the air and extend from one end of the warehouse to the next. Men in in heavy winter zip-up jackets operate forklifts and take the pallets out of the warehouse and into the cargo bay.

Once the chicken is frozen, it is loaded on ships in loose boxes, or is packed back into the containers. The containers, which constitute a majority of the poultry shipments, are loaded onto steam ships at the APM Terminals Mobile container terminal. 

Mediterranean Shipping Company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services, Maersk Line, China Shipping and CMA Shipping run steam ships out of the Mobile terminal. Traders such as Globex, Poseidon and even chicken growers Tyson Farms and Sanderson Farms organize chicken purchases and contract the ships to move Alabama's chicken throughout the globe.

Lyons, Alabama State Port Authority executive director, said they are looking to partner with a private firm to build a new $50 million refrigerated warehouse in order to export more chickens.

"As many birds as we produce here, it's a staggering thing," Lyons said.

Sources say the new refrigeration plant could generate $20 million in revenue annually and turn a profit within seven to 10 years. Seaonus has a letter of intent on the property.

APM Terminals, which owns 10 facilities nationwide, is expanding its Mobile site by 40-acres to accommodate more business, a renovation that will cost $50 million.

Brian Harold, APM Terminals terminal manager, said he anticipates a larger demand for Alabama's poultry going forward especially with the growing middle class in China and India.

"Obviously the demand for U.S. poultry has grown tremendously and it continues to do so," Harold said. "We at ATM terminals are looking forward to continuing to service that market.