Chickenomics: How chickens conquered our kitchens?
According to a recent paper by Carys Bennett at the University of Leicester and colleagues, the total mass of farmed chickens exceeds that of all other birds on the planet combined!
“Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner”, today this is the famous victory phrase used commonly among the PUBG community. Why wouldn’t it be? Currently, humans consume 65 billion chickens per year. They are just behind pigs and soon poised to take over them as the most common source of proteins derived by homo sapiens from animal kingdom. However, the unexplained question remains that how this south Asian bird, turned out to be the most preferred choice of meat eaters around the globe?
Let us try to understand with a little chicken history.
The story of humans and chicken interaction goes back to some 10,000 years ago when they were first domesticated. But their primary role then was in cockfighting or various other rituals. It was some 2000 years back that they started becoming a primary portion of our diets. They were still seen as a luxury meat because they had to be fed grains unlike other livestock who could be left in open to graze grass and they were also more prone to disease catching. Fast forward to the year 1940. To promote the consumption of chicken in US households, the United States Department of Agriculture ran a contest called “The Chicken of Tomorrow” to reward the heaviest breaded chicken. The winning chicken was 40% heavier than the standard chicken of that time and it revolutionized the ways in which chicken is produced and with year on year prices falling for chicken.
So, the looming question is how did this happen? Well, a one-word answer for this is ‘TECHNOLOGY’. Today the lifecycle of a broiler (the chicken that is bred entirely for meat) is completely pre-determined. They grow faster and heavier than ever before and can only survive supported by human technology i.e. by making use of artificial light and artificial temperature. A full-grown chicken weighs 4.2 kg today in a span of just 56 days which is 5x the weight of them in 1950s. The result of this efficiency is that large farms now produce up to 90,000 chickens at a time and can supply them in just about 40 days.
However, this selective breeding at a rapid scale brings about some demerits too. Because of excessive controlled environment, the chickens grow at such rapid pace that they aren’t able to sustain their own weight beyond the lifespan at which they need to be processed. It puts huge amount of pressure on their internal organs and they develop huge medical problems. Also, since the chickens are all identical with similar gene pool, they are all vulnerable to diseases. If even one bird catches something contagious, all are prone to get the same(Guess herd immunity is no chicken talk!). These issues have led to people advocating better lives for broilers and hence the emergence of new breeding styles like free range chickens which instead of living in cages are bred in open farms and organic chickens which are typically free from antibiotics or other synthetic chemicals. Organic chickens get to live the longest with 81 days of span, followed by free range birds getting 56 days and the least lives are for the intensively reared birds which have live anywhere between 35-40 days.
While organic farming might offer chickens a better quality of life, but consumers as usual are driven mostly by cost. Although, an intensively reared chicken in Indian markets cost around INR 150 per kg, a free-range chicken can cost you INR 400/kg and an organic full-grown chicken costs around INR 800-1000/kg.; and this is the reason why the demand for these selective varieties is almost negligible. Today, over 95% of chickens sold are an intensively reared one and the rest comes from the other two breeds.
The basic law of demand and supply holds true here too. As long as markets are demanding for cheap and plentiful chicken, they would continue to be bred even more intensively. Today, a square meter of area harbours 17-19 chickens. Do you think with passage of time more chickens per sq mtr and quicker life span would be bred? Leaving you with these thoughts for your next chicken dinner…
By: Isha Garg