Today’s Chicken: A Sickening Situation

[marmar]

(Civil Eats) Last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 317 people in 20 states had confirmed cases of Salmonella caused by chicken traced to a California processor. This should be (yet another) wake-up call that it’s time to make serious changes to the way U.S. chickens are housed, raised, and processed in the factory farming system. But there is an even deeper issue at the heart of this problem: The fact that chickens are deliberately bred for excessive growth.

Factory farm speed-breeding–the practice of selectively breeding “broiler” (meat) chickens to grow three times faster than 60 years ago–has created chickens which now struggle to simply move or stand. The University of Arkansas notes that if humans grew at a similar speed, a 6.6 lb newborn baby would weigh 660 lbs after two months.

“We have successfully bred most of the chicken out of the chicken,” Georgia farmer Will Harris told us recently. “A chicken in 1940, raised for 14 weeks to maturity, could fly. A chicken in 2010, raised for 6 weeks to maturity, struggles to walk.”

This rapid growth produces the huge white breast meat Americans are used to seeing at the supermarket, but what isn’t on the label is the terrible price these chickens paid. Excessive growth is causing massive suffering for nearly nine billion birds each year as well as potentially dangerous disease vulnerability for us. It’s more than enough to make you sick–and it just might. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2013/12/04/todays-chicken-a-sickening-situation/#sthash.GwvsjxKz.dpuf

[Galileo126]

1. They've also bred the flavor out of chicken

so now that chicken doesn't taste like anything. In a few more years, pork and beef will taste like nothing. All large-scale meat production has already headed down this road.

They may as well just stop categorizing animals, and just label it all "meat product", since it will soon all taste the same.

[gulliver]

4. Agreed.

KFC used to be a big treat, but for the past decade the chicken has turned more and more into this factory Frankenstein stuff. Industry is ruining the chicken just like they did the tomato. I do think people are catching on to it though.

[roody]

2. So happy to be an almost vegetarian!

[RebelOne]

14. Happy to be a complete vegetarian.

Not vegan because I eat dairy foods. But I do not eat anything with hair, fur or feathers.

[Aerows]

3. I am continuously puzzled by things like this

Everyone knows you need to cook chicken until it is 165 degrees in the center. I'm at a loss as to how you get salmonella from eating properly cooked chicken.

What am I missing?

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Not everyone knows that I guess

you should also cook ground beef until it's 160F at the centre, but people still get E. coli-related food poisoning from eating undercooked meat.

Part of the problem: the use of antibiotics in factory farming is making antibiotics less effective and breeding antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

[Aerows]

9. Basic sanitary kitchen practices are probably missing, too

I know, hard to believe, but it's scary to use a public restroom and see how many people leave it without washing their hands with SOAP and water. If they do that in public, they have to be doing it at home.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. Some of it is in the proccessing. Fecal mater getting into the meat. Dirty knives and saws.

[stevenleser]

5. Uh oh

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3499154

Skinner: "Please, no more threads about chicken... And then I get incredulous emails from people who are shocked, shocked that discussion of chicken -- chicken fercryinoutloud -- is not allowed. As if the discussion of chicken is something that is vitally important and that everyone is really interested in."
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LMAO, your OP gave me a flashback to the great DU Chicken wars... sorry!

[giftedgirl77]

7. Who knew chicken could be such a touchy subject...

Oh wait, I've been around here long enough to see that anything can turn into a touchy subject.

[pangaia]

13. Great photo !!

That's Frontier Field.. Rochester Redwings.. GO WINGS !!!

[quinnox]

8. I love the taste of chicken

There is a local place that makes amazing southern style chicken. I also eat hard boiled eggs just about every day for breakfast. They are full of good stuff for the body.

[Aerows]

10. I had an egg salad sandwich for dinner last night

Mashed up hardboiled eggs, onion, a sprinkle of garlic and pepper and mayo (out of the fridge). Delicious. The mayo was likely bad for me, but I was hungry and it was that or go out for fast food because I need to grocery shop. I picked the first of the options. Hey, at least I used whole wheat bread and a generous slice of lettuce to round it all out.

[dougolat]

12. If you are what you eat, what does tortured Frankenfood make you?...nt