FROM RED TO WHITE, FEELING BLUE: How chickens took over America’s dinner plates
Most chickens spend every minute of their short lives in crowded, ammonia-filled indoor spaces. They’re also bred to grow too fast, putting pressure on their joints and making normal chicken behavior impossible.
KELSEY PIPER: Earlier this month, almost 100 million Americans tuned in to watch the Super Bowl, and they ate about 1.4 billion chicken wings and drumsticks — wings and legs from 700 million birds. And that’s part of the larger picture of chicken consumption in America. Every year, Americans consume 8 billion chickens. These are mind-boggling numbers.
But it’s worth remembering we didn’t always eat this much chicken, and a new report sheds some light on how poultry took over the meat industry. It also provides some insights into how plant-based meat producers could gain a bigger share of America’s plates.
The report details the threat plant-based foods pose for the beef industry, which commissioned the report… The report’s assessment is that plant-based products are still a tiny share of the meat market, and those who buy them are typically “flexitarians” or other people trying to reduce their meat consumption. Plant-based products still have plenty of room for growth.
But the thing that stands out most in the report is actually a point of profound agreement between me and the beef industry: that the enormous rise in chicken consumption in America has been a disaster, though we have very different reasons for why we think so… Americans eat way more chickens — and, actually, significantly fewer cows — than we used to…
Per capita beef consumption has actually significantly declined over the last few decades. (To be clear, overall beef consumption is higher, but that’s because the population has increased dramatically.) Meanwhile, per capita chicken consumption has skyrocketed over the same period. In 1970, the average person ate about 50 pounds of meat from chickens a year; today, it’s more than 100.
From an environmental perspective, the rise of chicken at the expense of beef is okay news — intensive chicken farming doesn’t produce as many greenhouse gases as intensive beef farming (though it is bad for the environment in other ways). But from an animal welfare perspective, it is awful news…
Most chickens… spend every minute of their short lives in crowded, ammonia-filled indoor spaces… They’re also bred to grow too fast, putting pressure on their joints and making normal chicken behavior impossible. And one cow feeds lots of people, while one chicken doesn’t, so demand for a pound of chicken involves way more animal suffering than demand for a pound of beef…
plant-based meat producers could get a bigger share of the market. If they can drop their prices as much as chicken companies did, they might see a similar rise in sales. The report argues price wasn’t the only driver of chicken’s surge, and in fact that analysis suggests price explains less than half of it. Health and safety concerns about cholesterol and fat contributed too. Chicken is broadly thought of as a healthier meat…
The rise of chicken as America’s dominant source of protein from 1970 to the present has been almost unremarked upon despite its huge implications for the well-being of billions of animals. Whatever happens with plant-based meats, it’s likely to get a lot more attention. SOURCE…
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