When I was little, chicken was kind of a luxury {or so my mom tells me}, because it was expensive…really expensive. As I grew up, though, the price came down, and chicken was on the menu pretty frequently. According to an article on NPR, that price drop is because we have bred chickens to put on weight faster, with less food. The result is cheaper chicken for us, but the side effect is miserable chickens.
Apparently, through breeding, chickens put on weight at such a rapid rate, their bones and joints can’t take it. The chickens that are “lucky enough” to go to slaughter quickly, don’t suffer long. The chickens that are kept around for breeding have a little different story to tell, though. Once they hit a certain size, they have to be put on a very strict diet {their bodies simply cannot handle anymore weight gain} so they waddle around on sore legs, starving.
Companies like Whole Foods, and other animal rights activists, want to see slower-growing chickens hit the stores. The result would, of course, be less meat for more money. Whole foods has “announced that it wants all of its suppliers, even those raising large numbers of broilers indoors, to shift over to slower-growing breeds of chickens.” While our pocketbooks will suffer, the upside, they say, is that a slow-grower is more flavorful and packs a better health punch.
The National Chicken Council, advocates for “major poultry producers,” disagrees that the chickens are suffering, or that slow-growers are healthier. The Council points out that the breeding practices have “cut the cost of growing chickens, reduced the amount of land required to grow chicken feed, and made chicken the most popular meat in America.” A shift to slower-growing chickens would likely impact all three of those benefits.
As the HH and I have gotten older, we eat considerably less meat, so I am not really sure me weighing in {no pun intended} matters. I am super curious what all of YOU think, though. How much do you pay for a whole chicken now? Would you be willing to pay more? Would you eat less chicken if the price went up?
~Mavis
This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.
Quote of the Day “You will never be able to escape your heart. So it is better to listen to what it has to say.”
