Page 60 - Winter2017

This just twenty years, chickens did best on vitamin- test’s goal? The goal was to achieve “One bird,

incredible rich fish meal and other animal byproducts that chunky enough for the whole family—a chicken
were too scarce and expensive for farmers to with breast meat so thick you can carve it into
increase in offer to their ever larger flocks. Chickens did steaks, with drumsticks that contain a minimum
yield poorly on the cheaper soy-based substitutes, of bone buried in layers of juicy dark meat, all
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created a with poor weight gain for meat birds and poor costing less instead of more.”
egg quality for layers.
The contest winners duly delivered a
large chicken Jukes discovered that when he added anti- chicken that was 40 percent heavier than the
but also gave biotics to the feed of the chickens in his experi- standard chicken (reaching a total of three and
rise to an ments, they not only performed better than the a half pounds, a full pound over the average at
other groups, but they specifically gained more the time) in just eighty-six days from egg to
equally large weight. The birds given the greatest amount of contest’s end. This was only the beginning of

problem. antibiotics gained the most weight. The best the chicken’s unprecedented growth, however.
How to part was that this strategy was cheap, adding Today, chickens from those same blood lines
less than a penny per pound of animal feed reach six pounds in under seven weeks and
convince yet producing 25 to 50 percent gains in animal do so on half the amount of feed per pound of
people to eat weight. In this way, antibiotics became the flesh. Three times the amount of meat in half
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more chicken backbone and constant companion of modern the time for half the feed represents an almost
unimaginable achievement. Through careful,
meat production.
became the highly secretive breeding and cross-breeding,
new THE CHICKEN OF TOMORROW the “chicken of tomorrow” had finally arrived.
This incredible increase in yield created a
All the pieces were now in place for chicken
challenge. to shake off its “Sunday dinner” image and large chicken but also gave rise to an equally
become the meat of choice across the country. large problem. The chicken market was glutted,
All, that is, except the chicken itself. The birds eerily foreshadowing what industrial farming
had enjoyed a dramatic increase in weight, but would do time and time again with supply out-
they were still mostly dark meat and continued pacing demand. However, farmers responded by
to require a great deal of preparation. Despite its raising more, not less, of the unneeded item. If
continuing plunge in price, chicken was still not farmers were not going to raise fewer chickens,
the first choice of the average housewife and not people were going to need to eat more. How to
quite what the American family was looking for. convince people to eat more chicken became
In the 1940s, the United States Department the new challenge.
of Agriculture (USDA) organized a contest As events unfolded, the chicken glut be-
entitled “The Chicken of Tomorrow.” It was came an opportunity for modern marketing
perhaps the greatest effort ever put forth by the and for food processing gold. The poverty and
meat industry, involving government agencies, deprivation of the war years turned into the
scientists, colleges, researchers and volunteers prosperity and indulgence of the fifties and
from across the country. What was the con- sixties and transformed American eating and

INDUSTRIAL EGGS
Many people once considered eggs a special treat. Historically, hens produced fewer eggs, and many of those were
reserved for hatching to replenish the flock. Eggs also were generally only available seasonally. People were amazed
when Laura Ingalls Wilder was able to get her chickens to lay during winter in the 1910s. This feat was so spectacular at
the time that it played a crucial part in her writing career. Wilder’s success came from basic science: she watched how
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what she fed her chickens influenced their condition, until she found a balanced diet that provided all the nourishment
the birds needed without causing them to gain excess body weight and stop producing eggs.
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Like industrial chicken, mass-produced eggs have become a mainstay of the American diet. By 1960, the average
American was consuming around two hundred and sixty eggs a year or more, almost an egg a day. Laying hens have
had to keep up, and they have, increasing production from less than one hundred eggs per bird per year to almost three
hundred in the course of a half century.

60 Wise Traditions WINTER 2017