
From farm to factory: the unstoppable rise of American chicken - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/17/from-farm-to-factory-the-unstoppable-rise-of-american-chicken
======
Pfhreak
I rarely purchase meat, maybe once every two years, but when I do I buy
directly from a local farmer whose farm I can visit. I've bought whole beef
this way, and the quality to price ratio was amazing. Grass fed, organically
raised, humanely treated beef for ~$5.50/lb.

Granted, I had to buy hundreds of pounds of it, but I got all sorts of cuts,
bones for broth, organs (tongue, heart, liver, etc.)

The process was surprisingly simple, and I wish more people knew it was an
option. I'd be happy to outline what was involved for anyone curious.

I don't object to killing animals, but the way we raise them industrially is
truly one of the horrors of our time.

After committing to only eating animals I could trace the provenance of, I
rarely eat meat these days, perhaps once or twice a month I'll pull something
from the freezer. The variety of vegetarian and vegan options has really
exploded.

~~~
mschuster91
The way you procure meat is definitely the best way possible from an ethical
point of view, and I wish it would be more widespread. Unfortunately, it is
only accessible for the most privileged - for those who can upfront hundreds
of dollars for the animal, have ample space for a freezer and can afford the
electricity keeping it up.

We need to create a system that keeps up high animal care standards on one
side - and has widespread accessibility across all classes of society. The
alternative is that either we continue with meat grown in abhorrent conditions
with all risks (bacterial contamination of meat, pathogens jumping species)
and externalities (manure nitrogen runoffs, methane emissions, smell)
associated or that only the elites will be able to have meat - something that
far-right populists are already accusing left parties (such as the Greens in
Germany) of already doing.

(Yes, lab grown meat is a thing, but it will probably be another two or three
decades until I can eat a lab grown steak!)

~~~
gowld
$1000 for meat for a year doesn't require "the most privilege". It's certainly
not what is stopping millions of people in the US.

~~~
mschuster91
Two thirds of all Americans don't have 1000$ in savings
([https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86455/over-two-thirds-
am...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86455/over-two-thirds-americans-
have-less-1000-savings)), and of those that do have that amount available,
most are in no way able to put down $1000 in one piece for meat.

It always comes down to the "Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness" in the
end. Most of the stuff we are talking about here is nowhere near practically
applicable for the majority of the population.

~~~
johnbrodie
I have plenty of savings, but about $300 in my savings account, the rest
spread across checking and other accounts. I'd be counted amongst the "poor"
in this poll due to that. Is there more data somewhere? The poll is often
touted, but I wonder if it shows what you think, or just shows that savings
accounts now days are mostly useless?

~~~
mschuster91
These polls are based on net assets, at least the German ones which show
similarly disastrous results.

For what it's worth 40 million people i the US are facing eviction because
they can't come up with something as essential as _rent_. This is how deep the
social divide has become in the US.

~~~
johnbrodie
Got links for US ones based on net assets? Would definitely clear up the
situation one way or the other.

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9nGQluzmnq3M
> “If breast meat is worth two dollars a pound and dark meat is worth one
> dollar, which would I rather have?”

Western countries are weird about this. Chicken breast, particularly the
industrially produced Tyson broilers and their ilk, is bland, dry and
tasteless. (There's an Anthony Bourdain quote which I can't find right now
about chicken being what people who don't like food order in restaurants.)

In Asian countries "dark" meat is preferred and sells at a premium, because it
actually has some texture and taste.

~~~
adamjb
I think I found the Anthony Bourdain quote:

Like most other chefs I know, I’m amused when I hear people object to pork on
nonreligious grounds. “Swine are filthy animals,” they say. These people have
obviously never visited a poultry farm. Chicken—America’s favorite food—goes
bad quickly; handled carelessly, it infects other foods with salmonella; and
it bores the hell out of chefs. It occupies its ubiquitous place on menus as
an option for customers who can’t decide what they want to eat. Most chefs
believe that supermarket chickens in this country are slimy and tasteless
compared with European varieties.

from "Don't Eat Before Reading This", the essay which put him on the map as a
writer.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-
befor...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-
reading-this)

~~~
cookiengineer
Everybody that claims swine are filthy animals: that is absolutely not true.

They are filthy because they have to sleep in their own shit, because the
farmer presses them together in such a small room that they literally cannot
move without hitting each other.

If pigs are raised on an open field, they roll themselves in water to keep
them clean multiple times per day. On the other hand cows roll themselves in
their shit, even when provided with puddles of water...and are unable to clean
themselves afterwards because they ain't gonna take a bath.

Source: me, my grandparents had a rather mid-large farm in Germany and tried
to raise their stock as humane as possible.

They also tried to raise chicken in an open manner, but that's close to
impossible because you would have to have a lot of bushes, puddles, mixed
areas of grass, plants, and a lot of fences in between (so groups don't attack
other groups) around the stable. Otherwise chicken won't leave the stable,
even not when they get infected.

And the value of chicken stock is so low that it's a financial disaster if you
would build up a healthy environment for them, even if you would own the land.
They would just destroy the plants so regularly that you would have to replace
the plants at least on a monthly basis to provide hideouts and shadow for
them.

~~~
082349872349872
Pigs on alps keep themselves much cleaner than pigs in a sty[1].

Cattle use automatic brushes[2] when they're made available.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ww5nuVZnmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ww5nuVZnmc)

also pigs:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5fviQ_i3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5fviQ_i3c)

[1] Or at least the sort of stys which haven't been legal here for a long
time. Ferkeln in austrian music videos are even cleaner, but on the other hand
the farmer depicted is obviously also not in her daily outfit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-g6X8qob0&t=128](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-g6X8qob0&t=128)

0:35 damn, that's a sweet New Holland...

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474129)

~~~
cookiengineer
> Cattle use automatic brushes when they're made available.

Damn, that's actually a very nice idea. We didn't have those back then.

~~~
082349872349872
For poultry, what a former VC of mine tried to do was to have coops on wagons,
moving them around his large-animal pastures on a semi-daily basis.

Looks like it's a thing here, too:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobiles_Haltungssystem](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobiles_Haltungssystem)

FWIW, we only take "Freilandhaltung" eggs these days.

For Ländler-fans:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIrO9spk2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIrO9spk2A)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
In the US, it's called a chicken tractor.

------
spodek
Two points worth noting:

1\. Factory farming breeds viruses -- one of the main reasons people have been
saying "when, not if" about pandemics for decades. We happened to get a
coronavirus this time, but factory farms will produce a flu pandemic soon
enough if we don't stop them, which we can. Here are two videos by Dr. Michael
Greger for background:

\- Pandemics: History & Prevention:
[https://youtu.be/7_ppXSABYLY](https://youtu.be/7_ppXSABYLY)

\- Can we stop a future pandemic? Dr. Michael Greger M.D explains what’s next:
[https://youtu.be/N0pvR92XT30](https://youtu.be/N0pvR92XT30)

2\. We keep making markets more and more efficient and then lament when
there's no resilience and small problems affect everyone everywhere.
Redundancies and other inefficiencies aren't bad.

~~~
Falling3
Viruses and antibiotic resistance as well

------
poulsbohemian
We live in farm country, so we talk and hypothesize about the future of food
frequently. I'm inclined to think that we're going to see a lot more
vegetarians in the US middle / upper middle class. I also have to wonder if
we'll see a time where it is only the poor and the very rich who eat meat -
the poor eating factory "meat" and the very rich eating traditionally raised /
heritage / "organic" meat. We've cut way back on our meat consumption, because
we wanted to actually know the origin of our food. At least in our circle of
connections, it feels very much like there are a whole lot of vegetarians /
infrequent meat eaters.

~~~
Zigurd
Meat substitutes have already become fashionable. They are already in fast
food, which makes me doubt that cheap meat will even be food for poor people
when emulating the educated middle class is less expensive than eating meat.

Vat-grown meat will have to do better than emulating cheap chicken. Endangered
exotic species and ethical cannibalism will be tried. The Kardashians will
license their DNA and everyman, for a reasonable price, can eat the rich.

~~~
lvturner
I feel the risk from prions may put a swift end to any 'ethical cannibalism'
ideas

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)

~~~
sriacha
Presumably vat-grown 'human' meat would be free of prion risk?

------
fouc
>Counterintuitively perhaps, the industrialisation of chicken led to far fewer
choices when buying poultry.

This is actually a metaphor for what's happening in the computer industry
currently.

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082349872349872
For context, the UK and US are currently negotiating a trade agreement which
should cover, among other things, whether post-Brexit UK food safety laws will
be relaxed in general, and specifically for chicken. The negotiations are
currently on hold until after the elections in the latter jurisdiction, but
once it's all completed and the terms made public, I'll get a chance to
reevaluate my decision to call the UK "Airstrip One" due to its role within
Oceania.

~~~
wastedhours
I don't forsee it having a major impact in the purchasing of raw meat (I think
most supermarkets are on board with not selling it as most consumers don't
want it). What'll be interesting/disturbing is how it's integrated into pre-
prepared meals. That's where we'll feel it I suspect.

------
porknubbins
Non organic chicken is one of the few foods I find to be really disturbingly
cheap. .99 to $2/lb range for a living organism to have been fed, slaughtered,
transported and marked up at retail is a little off putting.

~~~
nemo44x
It is designed to allow poor people to have meat. A modern miracle really.

I don’t purchase it because I have enough money to buy chickens that been
humanely raised. I believe this is a moral obligation if you can afford it.
But I won’t judge people who can’t afford it to buy chickens raised this way.
If my fortunes change I will be grateful I can still buy a chicken. While I’m
not in that situation I will continue to consume free range, organic, “happy
chickens” that only had 1 bad day.

~~~
pacaro
I wonder about this too.it feels like the availability of cheap meat has a
significant social.impact that I don't see discussed anywhere. If factory
farmed meat was unavailable a significant section of society would only rarely
be able to afford meat. Put another way, the availability of cheap meat
disguises the true extent of poverty in this country

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sturza
"chicken harvest"

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metta2uall
This sort of extreme cruel exploitation of living beings with brains &
feelings will be thought of in the future similarly to how we think about
chattel slavery.. At least the next step in the industrialisation of meat
should be a huge improvement - just growing brain-less muscles..

~~~
BadassFractal
The reality is that most people don't care, or don't know enough to care, or
don't care enough to know. Switching to a meatless diet isn't an
insurmountable hurdle, it's just inconvenient. And even that small
inconvenience isn't something most people want to bother with.

Similarly, on the human front, a Westerner deploying even a little cash in the
poorest parts of the world can save hundreds of lives. But most people don't
care. They have their lives to live, mouths to feed, their local homes and
neighborhoods to take care of. Caring about the suffering of millions of
strangers thousands of miles away, regardless of species, isn't something
we're good at, or care much for.

BOCTAOE

~~~
ramraj07
While this is a fairly accurate explanation of why things are the way they
are, it doesn't mean it can't ever change. We don't care in general sure, but
the only hope we can have is that we care slightly more today than we did
yesterday. Everyone in the spectrum of poverty hopefully has taken a positive
step in this direction in the past few decades, and hopefully we continue and
accelerate.

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somurzakov
thats why the chicken outside US raised on small farms tastes 100x times
better

~~~
throWaythxMod
Ahh European exceptionslism. I don't really buy into marketing and was
extremely disappointed by the taste and quantity of food in the European
countries I visited.

There were exceptions, but the food is generally bland, and one of these
countries was Italy.

They really advertise the authenticity of ingredients, when they need to learn
"salt, acid, sugar, msg, fat"

~~~
diffeomorphism
> but the food is generally bland,

Similar experience in the other direction. Food in LA was incredibly
overseasoned and in particular drinks like lemonade were extremely sweet.
After a while I got used to it/had dulled my sense of taste so that this
tasted "normal" and European food "bland". Luckily after some time without
American food my sense of taste returned to normal.

