
How chicken became the rich world’s most popular meat - hvo
https://www.economist.com/international/2019/01/19/how-chicken-became-the-rich-worlds-most-popular-meat
======
kozikow
"the chicken now count for 23bn of the 30bn land animals living on farms." \-
it's not fair to compare count rather than mass. Single pig weights 20x more
than single chicken according to google search.

[https://outline.com/57eHyc](https://outline.com/57eHyc) \- I'll pay if you
let me pay per article!

~~~
Gys
The Economist is also on blendle.com where you can pay per article.

------
randomacct3847
I just came back from Japan and couldn’t get over how much more delicious the
eggs were over there than in the U.S. Even at 7-11 you could buy these peeled
hard boiled eggs in soy sauce with a slightly soft, dark orange yolk that were
amazing.

------
jpatokal
It's difficult to appreciate how freakish industrially farmed chicken is until
you have a comparison point. I'm typing this in Fiji, and yesterday purchased
three local chicken breasts: the total weight including skin and some
cartilage/bone was around 500g, which is about the same as a _single_ factory-
farmed, boneless, skinless breast fillet in Australia.

~~~
pvaldes
Modern farms didn't supersized chicken. We are comparing a yorkshire terrier
with a St. Bernard.

As with dogs, There are many types of chicken for different purposes. Some are
good egglayers, other are selected for its meat. Red junglefowl roosters range
around 2-3 Kg, whereas purely ornamental Serama can reach 340g and are a
little bigger than a blackbird.

On the other hand, anybody could grow huge chicken in their backyard, bigger
than any industrially farmed bird. You can breed easily 6Kg `Giant Jersey' or
`Brahma' roosters if you want. There are even 10Kg roosters (bigger than a
turkey). Is just that they eat a lot and take its time to grow, so the rate
conversion between grain and meat is poor. Industry does not breed it. Biggest
chicken are farmed organically by a few farmers.

Fiji chicken are probaby a landrace, a genetic mix of multipurpose bantam,
egglayers and game fowl that are much more easy to keep (being active, healthy
and smart birds able to free-range and care for themselves). Nothing bad with
that. Meat of those would be definitely harder (more muscle and less fat) but
tasty, top quality and from chicken living much happier lifes probably.

~~~
dwd
Free range chickens in Asia are similar - the ones you would see wandering the
local village. Freshly killed and the taste is amazing like you somehow
marinated the meat in chicken stock to get a strong, almost gamey taste.

Nothing like your standard supermarket frozen chook.

~~~
aeternus
> strong, almost gamey taste

Many people don't like that so farmers spent quite awhile breeding out the
gamey taste. Only recently is it coming back into favor.

~~~
dwd
The organic chicken from the local butcher is the only sort that comes close
and it usually far less stringy.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>As raising a single big bird is more efficient than raising two smaller ones,
it now takes farmers just 1.3kg of grain to produce 1kg of chicken,

The 1.3 kg of grain for 1kg of chicken statistic is amazing. Chicken is really
the closest thing we have to “lab grown meat”.

~~~
tokai
That reminds me of Mike the Headless Chicken. I wonder if it would be doable
to run a chicken farm with brainless chickens. In the end I'm unsure that
people would find it more ethical to scoop out their brains.

