Morning Chicken Thoughts

"What we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used" ~Wendell Berry


Reading food industry news in the morning has become a habit for me. Most of the time the email I receive "The Morning Cup" contains information about company buyouts, new products, new trends, and commonly new scientific research releases that pertain to the food industry (the hot topic now being about salt especially in kids' diets).
But, more and more, there are articles about how consumers are thinking about where their food comes from. There are more and more things about organic, free range, fair trade, hormone and antibiotic free. Personally I think this is wonderful! More and more restaurants are buying local organic produce; Which helps the environment and local economy. Many people don't realize how much is tied into the food industry. Think about it for a minute where does everything start? what is the chain? We have: seed companies, pesticide companies, water, fertilizers, machinery, farm hands, trucking, processing facilities, more water, energy, packaging, more trucking, more trucking, more processing, more packaging, more trucking, and finally into supermarkets where consumers get to pick out their "food" and don't even realize the true cost of their pre-prepared foods. Not to mention what goes into growing our meat.

Speak of meat there has recently been a lot of press about chickens. How they are raised, treated, what they are fed with, and if they get exposure to the outside or not. Jamie Oliver recently did a show about chickens, (which I regret I have not seen), and there have also been numerous reports against companies like Tyson about their treatment of chickens. PETA claiming that they have seen workers stomping on them (true or not I have no idea, but I'm sure the conditions are worse enough for that to be a secondary issue). I have read a lot on where meat comes from and how it is processed. I, myself, do not buy chicken and I buy limited amounts of other meat that claims to be range fed and locally produced. This is my personal choice (I don't buy chicken because, well, frankly the free range birds are well out of my price range, even at my local co-op, but when I go out to eat I sometimes get chicken- that in the back of my head I know was treated with hormones, antibiotics, and was probably crammed in a cage somewhere, processed with thousands of other birds in the same day, and then shipped across America, then moved through three different suppliers before it ended up in the restaurant freezer and onto my plate. So I know that I am adding to the demand of chicken even if I don't buy it from my grocer)
That sure was a long winded aside :)

What all this leads to, for me, is the question of is it possible to have free range chickens be the only chickens in the marketplace? In my assumption at this point it is possible, but with a cost. Just like anything else that we have access to in America. Raising free range chickens takes space, amongst other resources. In being honest, in my heart and in my brain I don't think it is possible to supply enough free range chickens to Americans at the rate in which we eat them now. Especially not in a sustainable manner, think about all the land that it would take to give that many chickens the "proper" space they deserve.

I am not trying to bad mouth the free range. In fact I wish I could support that market myself. And I am not trying to support factory farmed chickens either. I am just trying to think out loud here about what the reality is. The conclusion I have come to is that we have started mistreating our food supply (chickens, cows, pigs etc.) because the demand has grown so much. With so much supply, prices are cheap and the average person tends to eat meat at almost every meal. Honestly we don't need that much protein, besides the fact that we also get protein in other ways ( milk, nuts, beans & rice). This over consumption, mass production cycle is a vicious cycle that will only come to an end when people realize what this is doing to the environment, the animals, and our health. So next time you are in the supermarket or out to eat, think about where the meat you are buying is coming from, think about how much you think it is worth, and think about how much meat you really need in your diet. Having a nation that reduces it's consumption of meat is one step closer to having a food system that is more sustainable and an American population that is healthier. Hopefully, industry will then cut back on production and nothing will be wasted.

Textbook Quote

" As infants grow and develop, they are incorporated into society through a variety of experiences, and some of these experiences involve food. Children learn food provides comfort when hungry and is a pleasurable dimension of family activities, celebrations, and time with friends. Adults share meals with friends, family and coworkers as part of their social interactions."

Sometimes required reading for class isn't so bad :)

Cloned Meat...

I receive morning emails called the Morning Cup. These are filled with stories about happenings within the Food Industry. There is a gentleman named Bob that does little editorial pieces about random thins such as his overweight doctor that told him to watch his carbohydrate intake. Many times below his post he will post comments that he received from people about previous editorials. This is one of them in response to his discussion about how the FDA has approved the sale of cloned meat.

"Bob, cloned animals will be pressed on us from the industry and eventually, over time, become familiar and therefore acceptable. However, I doubt that the public will go along quickly nor easily. The need for cloned animals is similar to the need for bovine growth hormone to get more milk per cow when there was already a surplus of milk or irradiating meat that can still be contaminated later: These things are not driven by any lofty desire to help mankind or improve our food supply but simply to improve economics for business, and they offer little or no benefit to the public. The fact that our wonderful government (who of course is never influenced by lobbyists, big business, pro-business administrations, politics, bureaucratic blindness, or self-interest) has also approved and certified as safe such famous things as DDT, thalidomide, DES, defective polio vaccines in the early days, etc., certainly makes me feel good about eating meat or dairy from cloned animals. Hey, I'm happy to eat anything so the food companies can create distorted creatures with more meat or higher milk output or longer shelf life so they can save or make more money! Sure. Really! ..... Certainly having some solid science and greater peer concurrence behind a decision is important, but what these folks keep missing, over and over and over, is that people for some reason don't completely trust the FDA nor big business, and people don't want to find out x-years from now that it was all wrong and they've been harmed. Let's see: Should I take a chance on my health for no good reason or just go safe? Mmmm ..... Maybe food from cloned animals will be proven as truly safe after much time to rule out long-term effects not picked up yet, and maybe the public will embrace it after a time as it gradually insinuates itself on us. But for now, I'm in your camp, Bob, maybe for some different reasons but same endpoint. I just hope the FDA displays enough respect for the public it allegedly serves and enough integrity to control the companies that it's supposed to regulate by insisting that food from cloned animals be so labeled so we dumb unenlightened consumers can make our choices. The companies will survive, not to worry."


I believe that some of these views are shared by many people and I find it interesting that the writer states that people don't completely trust the FDA. To me it is amazing how that role of governmental bodies has changed from making decisions like fortifying flours with folic acid and fortifying milk with vitamin D to now regulating artificial flavors and passing cloned meat as safe.
I believe it is necessary to make changes within our food system in order to be able to effectively and sustainably produce food for the whole US. But I don't know the reasoning behind the cloning of animals and the desire to use these animals for a meat source. As far as I am concerned animals are capable of breeding. They do not need humans to physically remove DNA from them and make a clone.