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Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

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Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#101

Post by mikeash »

ars wrote: post #77
mikeash wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A flying saucer lands in front of the UN. The aliens’ speech to the General Assembly is the most watched live broadcast in history. The world listens to this speech and learns: - The UFO craze of the mid 20th century was real. Aliens really were abducting and probing humans. - Their evaluation established that we are not clever or strong enough to be useful, but we are delicious and cheap to feed. - A fleet of transp…

Let's go with your idea. The desires of a chicken are to eat and make more chickens. The desires of a human are more complex. For this example we don't need to list out what they are. So let's say you are offered the opportunity to go to space as in your scenario. And your desires are met. But at the age of 40 you are painlessly killed and eaten. And you are assured of having lots of children. What do you think? Woul…

I’m not sure chicken desires are quite that simple, nor that many humans would accept your deal. But even if we take all of that at face value: would you describe the result as “successful”?

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#102

Post by wortelefant »

lostjohnny wrote: post #29

because chickens are cheap to feed and breed you don't need automation to make it cheap My family used to breed any sort of livestock, from chickens to lambs, from cows to pigs, from rabbits to pigeons High quality meat, just for the family chickens are by far the cheapest and easiest (rabbits get sick easily, pigs eat a lot, cows need a lot of work to keep them clean etc. etc.)

thanks to the bland taste of these factory-produced chicken, plant-based meat alternatives become more viable as an alternative. In asian dishes I started to replace chicken with seitan, the differences are too small to notice https://avocadosandales.com/2017/12/17/chickwheat-shreds/

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#103

Post by artifinch »

avar wrote: post #26
hombre_fatal wrote: post #5

I always found it a bit tacky to call it an "achievement" for the animal/plant that humans farm it. Same with "evolutionary" changes due to selective breeding. Both said in the video. Always feels like someone is trying to spin reality on me. "What? The birds love it! Instead of living in nature in a part of Africa, they are suffering worldwide to the tune of billions!" Their hard work paid off!

What sort of lives do you think birds living "in nature" in Africa have? Instead of being painlessly gassed to death like farmed chickens they'll be eaten alive by some predator, or instead of being provided with antibiotics as hatchlings perhaps worms will eat most of their siblings alive before they leave the nest. Romanticizing factory farming is ridiculous, but so is romanticizing the lives of wild animals. From…

I was hopeful that you were correct about chickens being gassed, but unfortunately that only seems to be the case[1] in the UK:

> The majority of poultry (chickens, hens and turkeys) in the UK s are now killed using gas. > UK law states that animals must be killed, not just stunned, using this method.

From the same source, here is the method used most widely due to cut costs:

> Birds are hung upside down by their legs on metal shackles along a moving conveyor belt. > They move along the production line to a stunning water bath; when the bird's head makes contact with the water, an electrical circuit between the water bath and shackle is completed, which stuns the bird. > The conveyor belt then moves the birds to a mechanical neck cutter, which cuts the major blood vessels in the neck. > Live bird shackling causes pain, and hanging birds by their legs is stressful for them.

I was able to find many sources that confirm this just by googling "how are chickens slaughtered." I'm skeptical of PETA and other radical-seeming groups, but I found a source that seems to be pro-chicken that acknowledges this, as well[2]. It says:

> Birds are stunned (rendered unconscious and unaware of pain) and then slaughtered with a quick, single cut to the throat.

However, researching this process reveals many articles about it's ineffectiveness - particularly in the stunning of the birds.

> Brain activity indicates that these animals may be capable of experiencing pain first when they receive a paralyzing electric shock that induces tonic muscle seizures, then when their throats are forced against a sharpened blade. [3]

Furthermore, sometimes the throat-slitting process, too, fails. The next step in the production line is the boiling of the bird carcasses to remove feathers, which means that many birds are boiled alive, hanging upside down from their legs. The Washington post reports the number to be around a million a year in 2013[4].

I always hope that animals are treated humanely, and until very recently I had few qualms with animal products. However, I personally have found that every time I investigate these matters, I am faced with a bleak truth - animals are being tortured constantly, in the millions.

I know you never claimed that all chickens were painlessly gassed, but I feel that dismissing the issue as being more humane than nature (and I agree that nature is brutal) will only deepen the problem.

[1]: https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/slaughter/fac... [2]: https://www.chickencheck.in/faq/how-chickens-slaughtered-pro... [3]: https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/chickens-slaughtered-consc... (my apologies for a mobile link) [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/usda-plan-to-speed-u...

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#104

Post by deschutes »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #97

Whenever I travel outside the US, I'm always struck by how different the chickens look. Chickens in the US have a pale appearance, with flabby, almost mushy meat. They look as if they were grown on a tree, never alive and running. While chickens in say, Italy or Mexico tend to look like they were alive at some point. There's color in the meat, often a yellow tint. Their skin and muscle look used and not atrophied. I…

The bulk of the video is a british chicken farmer explaining the economic realities. I don't think bad chicken is unique to the US; I suspect cheap meat is about the same everywhere.

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#105

Post by 13of40 »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #97

Whenever I travel outside the US, I'm always struck by how different the chickens look. Chickens in the US have a pale appearance, with flabby, almost mushy meat. They look as if they were grown on a tree, never alive and running. While chickens in say, Italy or Mexico tend to look like they were alive at some point. There's color in the meat, often a yellow tint. Their skin and muscle look used and not atrophied. I…

I've noticed the same thing with tomatoes and apricots. I've got a good friend whose family have an apricot farm in the Kurdish part of Turkey, and their apricots are amazing, but the same variety grown in Western Washington tastes like plastic. There's something seriously pathological with the "terrior" in the western part of north America. (Luckily it doesn't extend to wine.)

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#106

Post by avar »

Creationer wrote: post #88
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but why are they the cheapest form of meat? There’s probably some biochemical or energy utilization reason. Perhaps it has to do with chickens being fairly lean meat. I don’t know, but have often wondered.

Contrasting against Pigs and Cows: 1. Small animal which requires less bone structure to support (bone scales non-linearly with mass for land animals). 2. Shorter lifespan and use of eggs allows simpler and quicker sexual selection. 3. Less intelligent animal so less energy and nutrition spent on growing the brain and maintaining its function. Its a smaller animal, basically. Fish and insects are more efficient than…

The main reason has little to do with any of that, but just historical inertia.

There's a lot of species that could have potentially replaced the chicken if we unwind human history and started anew, but it's not a competition between wild species of birds today, but chickens with at least 5000 years of human-guided domestication v.s. most other species.

The same can be said about pretty much anything people eat and farm. Most modern fruit and vegetables were pretty much inedible in their primordial pre-domesticated forms, it's only through thousands of years of effort that we have what we've got today.

In terms innate qualities making chickens suitable for domestication over other birds, some of those are probably:

1. They're pretty much flightless[1], even in the wild. This excludes most bird species right off the bat. Hard to domesticate something that'll just fly away.

2. They're comfortable in groups, and have a group hierarchy. This tends to be common among species humans have domesticated. Good luck domesticating e.g. birds of pray productively, they'll constantly be fighting each other for territory.

3. They're not picky about food, and don't require humans to actively feed them in the context of pre-industrial village life. Some birds only eat say insects, chickens can eat pretty much anything, even other chicken.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#107

Post by ars »

mikeash wrote: post #101
ars wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go with your idea. The desires of a chicken are to eat and make more chickens. The desires of a human are more complex. For this example we don't need to list out what they are. So let's say you are offered the opportunity to go to space as in your scenario. And your desires are met. But at the age of 40 you are painlessly killed and eaten. And you are assured of having lots of children. What do you think? Woul…

I’m not sure chicken desires are quite that simple, nor that many humans would accept your deal. But even if we take all of that at face value: would you describe the result as “successful”?

Well that depends on your goal wouldn't it?

I'm not sure what the goal of the chicken is except maybe to make more chickens, and if that's the goal then yes chickens were successful.

If your goal as a human is to explore and pass on your knowledge to your children, then yes, that could be considered as successful as well.

Also, it depends in large part on if your goals are personal, or generational. If personal then you could argue both ways. But if generational then yes definitely a success.

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#108

Post by 13of40 »

wortelefant wrote: post #95
arendtio wrote: post #57

Maybe Farmers should be required to print a photo of the actual living bird and their habitat on the packaging. When consumers would see those scruffy chicken for $2 compared to the healthy $7 they might choose the organic ones more often. Killed and unfeathered they all look the same.

the trend to "free-range" chicken reminds me of similar half-hearted efforts against the climate crisis; we can't decrease CO2 levels just by collecting plastic trash separately if it is shipped to the incinerator all the same. And despite the animal welfare theatre, the organic farm chicken will be killed just the same. But we feel a bit better about it.

I think the point is it grew up eating weeds and bugs instead of corn meal byproduct. Maybe not better for the chicken spiritually, but a better choice for us to eat, nutritionally.

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#109

Post by ska »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #97

Whenever I travel outside the US, I'm always struck by how different the chickens look. Chickens in the US have a pale appearance, with flabby, almost mushy meat. They look as if they were grown on a tree, never alive and running. While chickens in say, Italy or Mexico tend to look like they were alive at some point. There's color in the meat, often a yellow tint. Their skin and muscle look used and not atrophied. I…

It certainly extends to taste, I wouldn't be surprised if nutrition also.

I don't think you can be as simplistic as "US chicken bad" though. The US has a very well established industrial food chain that reaches everywhere, but it's not the only thing going on. The US industry has some economies of scale that work for it too.

Quick-cheap-and-nasty chicken in the UK is just as flavorless as in the US. And you can find better stuff in the US, albeit at higher cost. But the same can be said of flavorless but cheap Holstein milk & butter, or basically anything that has been subjected to aggressive optimizing for cost per unit/volume whatever. Applies to factory bred chickens, but also tomatoes designed to ship well.

The end result is usually pretty cheap, and pretty bland at best.

Re: Why is chicken so cheap? [video]

#110

Post by nchase »

arendtio wrote: post #94
erikig wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminded me of the "Colin the Chicken" skit on Portlandia where a couple ordering chicken gets to see its birth certificate, diet, emotional profile, heritage and family... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__PVLB8Nm4

Unavailable in my country :-/ Probably the same as this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAlWrT5P2VI

yeah
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