The Modern Broiler: Today’s Chicken

Let’s make no bones about it…

…there is frankly nothing natural about today’s table chicken.

The Broiler – man’s answer to the chicken

Today’s broiler is, by definition, man-made.

Entirely synthetic.

A figment of our own imagination.

Birthed in the bowels of our modern-day industrialised mindset.

Forged in the fires of commercial competition and strivance for wealth domination,

By post-war conglomerates of men in suits with appetites to carve up a global economy to fall heartily in their favour…on their plate.

The 1940’s contest for The Chicken of Tomorrow

The 1948 documentary, The Chicken of Tomorrow, portrays a chilling tale of commercial agricultural artificery:

In which the retail cartels of post-war USA pivoted the aggregated workforce of the nation’s wives/mothers from arms and ammunition production…

…conveniently rebounding from austerity and into producing the nation’s most lust-worthy chicken (according to their taste):

• Big,
• fast-growing,
• needing the least feed and therefore (…yup, you’ve guessed it…)
• making the most money.

Effectively turning a God-given natural creature, into an industrialised, artificial, patented product.

All conceived within the covetous minds of companies of men with designs to own their neighbours’ heritages.

Through a series of heavily-funded regional and nationwide breeding contests,

An entirely fragmented hetrogenous mix of natural poultry breeds, bred spontaneously by over 6 million family farms nationwide…

…was narrowed down to a single breed of commercially advantageous mix,

To be coined as the gold standard for furnishing tables across the entire USA (and far beyond), for generations to come.

The modern-day broiler was born.

The post-war money men of America had declared open season on industrial chicken consumption.

Industrialised consumption

The defences to every household were breached and the floodgates to the artificiers’ wares flung asunder taking households by storm.

Every capitalist’s dream.

“The poverty and deprivation of the war years turned into the prosperity and indulgence of the fifties and sixties and transformed American eating and cooking habits. Refrigerators, packaged baking mixes and all sorts of processed foods flooded the market.” – The Chicken: A Brief History of America’s Most Consumed Meat (The Weston A Price Foundation)

Their ‘new’ broiler had successfully superimposed itself upon the very definition of a real chicken in the minds of arguably the world’s most influential nation.

And even more significant, the next generation was now entirely subject to this switch –

And with each generational leap the reference of origin would be further out of reach.

Ignorance abounding.

Forming consumer expectations

After a decade – and entering into the 1950s, the jostling for pole position in the monopoly race to feed the nation heated up.

Major retailer Tyson Foods seized the crown to outstrip its peers in becoming the defacto source of household chicken meat.

“In the early 1970s the research and development team led by Janey Barnard had begun selecting breeding stock with a less pronounced keel bone – largely done through the ‘feel’ of the breast meat. In doing so they were selecting for birds with more breast meat, creating a fuller appearance on the existing broiler frame, which, in turn, made the finished product more appealing to consumers.” – How the Cobb 500 Changed the US Market (The Poultry Site)

Drawbacks (& commercial responses) to intensive broiler farming

As one can imagine,

If you take a natural chicken out of its natural habitat,

Cram it into huge communes, densely packed, with little space to move (or even breathe) and overfeed  for hulking them out…

…the outcome will be huge, plump chicken alright – but at the severe expense of health and sanitation calamity.

Disease, poor body condition and large-scale premature mortality are the things which spring to a common-sense frame of mind.

So what would big industry’s response be to such a challenge?

Admit defeat and return to nature’s way?

Fat chance!

Rather an even more graven solution, to an already over-imagined runaway endeavour:

The rise of 100% pharmaceutical dependence for broiler survival.

In other words, the modern-day broiler chicken is ‘hooked’.

Addicted to a pharma-cocktail that without, it simply cannot live.

And according to said commercial wile, this addiction played right into the hands of the world’s major drug manufacturers, who levied this advantage into calling the shots over large-scale chicken production.

Merger and acquisition season on poultry was now in full flight:

“Cobb had begun as a family business – Cobb’s Pedigreed Chicks – in Littleton, Massachusetts, during 1916. It was acquired by the pharmaceutical manufacturer The Upjohn Company in 1974 during an era when several major poultry breeders were bought by drug companies.” – How the Cobb 500 Changed the US Market (The Poultry Site)

Today, Cobb’s flagship broiler product, the Cobb 500, is worldwide champion of the chicken meat market.

“Today, 90 percent of the 23 billion chickens eaten every year are either Cobb or Ross broilers”

So in turn, the world’s mega drug companies have induced a world of consumers to crave a hyper-medicated, supersized table meat…

…blown to cartoon proportions by our ever-increasing insatiable appetite for more…regardless of what we had already.

Since that change, until now, our definition of a ‘chicken’ has never been the same.

This generation and perhaps the next, unless we go back,

Will never really know what a natural chicken really looks or tastes like.

Now, over to you…

• What are your thoughts on the origins of today’s broiler chicken?
• What is your view on it’s current grip on our meat eating economy?
• Are you poultry farming using alternative breeds, or methods, other than intensive?

I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Leave a comment below.