What is That Chicken I'm Eating Anyway?

With recent food scares, many consumers are starting to question where their food comes from. I am one of those people. I call farms and ask questions about how the animals are raised, and I have even been known to call the slaughterhouse to try and gauge whether the animal was treated humanely or not.

In this process I have learned a lot. Some farmers will talk at length and tell you what their animals are partial to eating, how they live, and how they care for them. Others will not discuss anything and when you ask the breed of animal, they will say “you wouldn’t recognize it.” I wonder if farmers realize that this kind of answer throws up a red flag to the consumer.
The best chickens that I have ever eaten come from a farm in Allensville, N.Y. The chickens are so good that until recently I wanted to adopt the farmer who raised them. This is a story of what changed in the relationship!

I had always been told that the chicken I was buying was an heirloom Kosher King and it was priced accordingly. Then one day a friend who raises chickens told me it didn’t look like an heirloom chicken; for one thing, its legs should have been longer. While heirloom and heritage are often used interchangeably, three components are involved in the use of these two words: unique genetic breed traits, grown or raised many years ago, and typically produced in a sustainable manner.

I called the store where I bought the chicken and asked them to look into the matter which they did. They called the farm and were told it was a Kosher Cobb. This name was unfamiliar to me, and a Goggle search produced nothing. I looked up Cornish Cobb and discovered that a Cobb is a Cornish X Rock cross – not a heritage bird but a modern hybrid bred specifically for meat production.

Then I went to the farm’s own website, which said they had Fedora, Ross, Silver Cross, and Kosher King chickens and that their chickens were allowed to take their normal time to fatten up. Was it their special diet of corn, canola seeds, and soybeans that made them taste so good? Or was it other reasons, such as whether they were pastured in movable hen houses or the age they were killed?

As I pondered these questions, I decided to go to the end of the process and check the slaughterhouse one more time. Yiks! I discovered the “Buddhist style chicken” label clipped on the chicken looked the same as the chicken I had been eating, except, in tiny letters, the name of the slaughterhouse had changed.

It turned out that this slaughterhouse was cited in November 2005 by the USDA for sanitation violations and assault of the inspectors. I had always assumed that “Buddhist style poultry” meant that the chicken was treated with great respect, as Buddhists don’t believe in injuring or killing a live, breathing animal or person. However, I found out that “Buddhist style poultry” merely refers to a chicken that has its head and feet left on and the intestines taken out – not the humane treatment of animals.

Now I felt it was time to speak to someone at the farm, which I did. I was told that since their slaughter facility burned down 2-1/2 years ago, they were using two outside slaughter houses. They didn’t seem too concerned when I mentioned the violations of the slaughterhouse.
Here’s what they told me: They deliver Fedora, Ross and Kosher King varieties to the store where I buy my chicken, but most likely I was eating a Ross, a white featured bird – hence the name Blanco. Their two heirloom birds were the Silver cross and the Kosher King.
The farm gets birds from eight other farms and keeps them in coops with a 25-foot-high roof, double the space that commercial chickens get. Because of the quantity of birds they have and with the danger of predators and bird flu, the chickens are not allowed outside. They are raised by age rather than weight –to-feed ratio.

The farm never advertises that its birds are free roaming because of the connotations the term would have with customers. The chickens are not fed organic grain and they are killed between six and 10 weeks old. About 2,000 birds are shipped out a day, six days a week.
So what was bothering me?

Several things: The Silver Cross and the Kosher King are hybrids, not heirloom birds. The farm doesn’t need to be concerned with weight-to-feed ratio because this was taken care of in the breeding. Chickens don’t fly upward 10 feet – never mind 25 feet – and the reason the chickens are not outside is that they probably have upward of 50,000 birds in one place at any one time, and the care or lack of care that goes into slaughtering a chicken is indicative of its life here on earth. Those were the things wrong with our conversation.

Now don’t misunderstand me. The chicken I had eaten was excellent. My point is this: There should be truth and transparency from the producer to the consumer and there is a cost factor to consider.

The most common breeds of chicken consumed in the U.S, are Cornish X Rock crosses that are bred to gain weight quickly and inexpensively. Selling a hybrid chicken as a heirloom that is not even fed organic grain is like ordering a filet mignon in a restaurant and receiving a flank steak.
As a consumer or as a producer, what do you think and what would you do?

Published in Farmers Market Today October 2007

My writings can be found at http://www.edibleboston.net/index.htm and www.belmontfarmersmarket.org/newsletters/2007