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.