FOWL TIMES

Left wing, chicken wing, it don’t make no difference to me. ~ Woodie Guthrie

Are these fowl times? Most certainly they are.

I’m not referring to the all-too-extended federal government shut-down or the deluded, inept man who’s responsible for it. No, I’m referring to the swelling success of Gallus gallus domesticus, a subspecies of the red junglefowl, otherwise known as chicken. During the past several decades chicken has become the world’s most popular meat.

Chickens were first domesticated in India and South East Asia around 6000 BCE. They were not kept strictly for food until much later, probably the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE. There are hundreds of chicken breeds that differ principally by primary use, whether for eggs, meat, or ornamental purposes, as well as size, amount and color of feathering and plumage, number of toes (some have four, others five), egg color and origin.

Chickens are no longer little; they account for 23 billion, 77%, of the 30 billion land animals now living on farms. As shown in the chart below, chicken surpassed pork consumption in 2000 and hasn’t looked back yet. They have better vision than humans and can see the ultraviolet spectrum. Average per person consumption of chicken is 92.1 lb. Beef consumption is just half that of chicken. Chicken has captured the fancy of meat-eaters around the world, from Chicken Tandoori and General Tso chicken to southern fried chicken and, of course, chicken nuggets. Above the world, Thai chicken was the NASA shuttle astronauts’ favorite meal. Chickens have flown their coops onto our meal tables in a big way. My Google search for “chicken recipes” resulted in 901 million hits; “beef recipes” garnered a mere 647 million.

Source: The Economist and OECD

Chicken is flying ever higher as our preferred meat, thus the US produces a lot of it. In 2017, 8.91 billion chickens were consumed. One important reason for chicken’s increase in consumption is its price. The real price of chicken has diminished to one-third that of beef. Chickens have also grown heavier due to breeding. The average weight of an almost 2 month old broiler chicken has increased over 200% from 1978 to 2005. Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” The average commercial poultry farm processes over 38,000 chickens each year; that’s some cathedral.

What state is the largest producer of chickens in the US? It’s Georgia, which produces 9.3 million pounds of chicken every day. The largest producer of chicken eggs is Iowa, whose hens lay 15.9 billion eggs each year. Every year, the US produces 27 chickens for each and every person and 325 eggs per person. The most popular type of fried or frozen chicken eaten in America is the nugget.

Chicken nuggets were invented in the 1950s by Robert Baker, a food science professor at Cornell University, and published as an unpatented academic work product. Baker and his associates called this bite-sized piece of chicken, coated in batter and then deep fried the "Chicken Crispie." McDonalds first introduced its McNuggets in 1983. My quest to determine how many chicken McNuggets are sold was not successful. McDonalds says it sells 550 million BigMacs each year in the US, but not how many nuggets. Perhaps they can’t count that high. I did discover that 69.4 million Americans consumed nuggets in 2018.

McDonalds McNuggets, like all chicken nuggets, are manufactured. The breast meat is ground and added to a blender with a mix of seasonings and chicken skin, which acts as a natural binder and is said to add flavor. Next, the chicken mixture is molded into the four signature McNugget shapes: the ball, the bell, the boot and the bowtie. The shapes are coated in a light batter and then coated again in a thicker tempura batter. The double-breaded nuggets are par-fried at the factory, which sets the batter but keeps the chicken raw until it's fully fried and served at the restaurant. A 4-nugget box has 180 calories, 11g of fat, 11g of carbohydrate and 10g of protein. There’s also a 50-nugget box that has 2210 calories if you’re especially famished. Yum.

But chickens don’t just come in boxes; they roam a small but increasing number of American backyards. From a 2013 USDA study, "Raising chickens in urban environments is a growing phenomenon in the US. Urban chicken flocks are not part of the commercial poultry industry; however, they sometimes provide chicken meat and eggs to local food systems such as farmers’ markets.” The study found that 0.8% of all households own chickens. Chickens were owned on 4.3% of single-family homes of one acre or more.

A survey of urban, suburban and rural household chicken keepers revealed that most (71%) respondents owned fewer than 10 chickens and had kept chickens for less than 5 yr (70%). Major reasons for keeping chickens were as food for home use (95%), gardening partners (63%), pets (57%), or a combination of these. 

      Part of the growing interest in backyard chicken keeping is that it’s crunchy. Witness the California Poultry Federation’s, urban flock workshops described at their Backyard Flock Information Page: You’ll have to hurry if you want to attend their latest workshop on Jan. 27, 2019 in Stockton that focuses on flock care, management and pest/disease control. Aesop said long ago don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. However, backyard chicken flocks are spreading their wings across America.

So when you next want to eat some chicken remember Guy Fieri’s maxim, no one likes rubbery chicken, and cook it tenderly. You’ll be in good company.