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![]() They say that “blood runs thicker than water”; well, in the case of poultry, it also runs deeper than feed or environment. While most feel secure in the animal welfare standards of organic and pasture-raised poultry, they don’t realize that the single most important thing one should consider when buying chicken or turkey is the bloodlines these animals come from. Should you buy hybrids or heritage? If you want to make the world’s best chicken soup, there’s only one way to go. Heritage chickens are those to have maintained their original bloodlines from before the 1940s, when scientists started using a revolutionary new breeding technique called hybridization for the creation of single trait (meat or egg) poultry. While a heritage chicken grows to an average weight of 3 lbs in 16 weeks, the modern meat hybrid, aka the Cornish cross, will reach an average of 4 lbs in only 5½ weeks. This radical new form of breeding allows for incredibly efficient growth and egg production rates in commercial chickens but greatly sacrifices animal welfare and flavor in order to make this possible. Hybrids are riddled with health problems and chronic pain. Five percent or more will regularly experience a slow and painful death from heart or organ failure because they cannot cope with their body’s pace of growth and many will go lame. The hybridized breeding stock, a topic I will discuss more fully in the future, must continue to grow to sexual maturity in order to hatch new chicks. Since they are meant to be slaughtered months before this the breeders grow to a tremendous size and experience the most horrendous and disturbing suffering of all. Also since meat hybrids are bred for fast growth with little attention to flavor and because they must be butchered at such a young age, they have little taste and a strange and spongy texture. Cornish crosses were bred to live in closely controlled air conditioned environment with a constant cocktail of medication and antibiotics. With the growth of pasture raised poultry many have started to put hybrids on pasture, despite their being ill equipped to deal with outdoor life. When raised outdoors Cornish Crosses regularly struggle to breath and get around in even mild heat and will regularly die in mass during heat waves. Meanwhile well-meaning consumers are flocking to pasture raised poultry not knowing the truly nasty places their birds are coming from.* When searching for heritage don't be fooled by organic certification or claims of pasture raising. Unless the chicken or turkey you're buying is certified as heritage you can assume it comes from hybrids. You can find some national and local purveyors of heritage meat by using the resources section of my blog. But when it comes to kosher, heritage is entirely unavailable. Kosher readers of my blog will have to try to find a local shochet (kosher butcher) to help shecht, process, and kasher some locally sourced heritage birds if they would like to recreate this recipe. ![]() Chicken used to be an expensive, special, and somewhat gourmet food. Modern breeding methods have changed it to an everyday, bland one. Unless we are ready to recalibrate how we purchase and cook poultry, these problems will persist. What consumers fail to recognize is that the animal welfare issues of today go much deeper than choosing free range or organic. With the ability to control evolution and genetics, our power over animals is almost godlike. We must consider every piece of an animal’s existence including the breeding, raising, transport and slaughter; or in other words from cradle to grave. Only when we take all this into account will we be able to make the world’s best chicken soup, the recipe for which you can look forward too next week!
5 Comments
Liron
7/6/2013 06:01:20 am
Yadidya, fascinating--I should have realized modern AG would corrupt the basics of avian protein in the ways you described. What are the alternative sources? If organic and free range are not a guideline, are there "go-to" brands returning to heritage genetics?
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Yadidya
7/6/2013 01:44:13 pm
I wouldn't feel bad for not knowing about these genetics problems. Wide scale awareness of this issue is just starting to develop. If you don't keep kosher than you can find purveyors of heritage poultry in the resources section of my blog under the heading of "Heritage Meat and Poultry" companies. If you keep kosher than you would have to find a local farmer who raises heritage and a shochet to slaughter the birds for you, not an easy task by any means. My suggestion to anybody that values kosher is to eat hybridized birds from a progressive meat company like KOL Foods or Grow and Behold and put pressure on them to start producing heritage. Also chickens and turkeys are the only birds to have undergone intense genetic manipulation so another good way to avoid genetics problems in poultry is to eat duck or goose.
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Rachel Sacks
12/20/2013 05:39:12 am
Great article, and interested reply to Liron. I had the same questions as him. I wish we could get Grow and Behold in Canada. I have to check what KOL Foods is, but as far as I know, there is no such kosher company that serves or delivers to Canada. :(
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Yadidya
12/23/2013 10:46:49 am
Well even if KOL or G&B were available in Canada they don't sell heritage poultry anyways so don't feel too bad.
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Rachel Sacks
12/23/2013 12:38:56 pm
But still, it would be nice to be able to buy their other products as well as their chicken. It's better chicken than anything I have access to, and certainly the best kosher red meat I could get. Leave a Reply. |
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