Feel like chicken tonight? You might want to reconsider — as these industry secrets are enough to put anyone off their dinner.
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00:00Feel like chicken tonight? You might want to reconsider,
00:03as these industry secrets are enough to put anyone off their dinner.
00:07Here's some crazy numbers for you. The U.N. estimates that 70 billion chickens are
00:11slaughtered annually for the purposes of food consumption. Yes, billion with a B.
00:15With a population of just over 8 billion humans on the planet,
00:18this equals more than 8 chickens per person, per year.
00:23What does all of this mean in terms of commerce? In 2022, the U.S. saw sales of 168 million
00:28chickens at a value of $74.7 million, according to the USDA. Producers therefore breed countless
00:34birds in inhumane living conditions in order to provide enough food-grade poultry to feed
00:38the populace. And as the population grows all around the world, the demand for more
00:42chicken is set to grow right along with it. 99.9 percent of chickens produced for grocery
00:48stores come from factory farms, which often engage in inhumane practices.
00:52To provide chicken at quantity, an incredible number of animals are held and raised in
00:56space-restrictive areas. This can include the use of cages that are only slightly larger than
01:00the birds themselves, effectively removing their ability to move. A 2022 agriculture
01:05census from the USDA indicates that chickens represent more than 90 percent of all land-based
01:10animal farming, thanks to the mid-1990s ramp-up of chicken consumption over beef.
01:14Factory farming of chickens isn't unique to the U.S., either,
01:17and farms all over the world enforce similar conditions on these animals.
01:20I've seen birds left for dead for days on end.
01:24Animal rights groups such as PETA and the ASPCA frequently draw attention to the inhumane
01:29practices used by chicken farmers. Footage of overcrowded pens or chickens kept in tiny cages
01:34provide ample evidence of the conditions under which these animals live.
01:37The smell is just putrid death.
01:43The companies that run these farms often claim that factory farming is necessary for farmers
01:47to maximize profitability while producing enough chicken to keep grocery stores stocked.
01:51It can be hard to picture how many resources it takes to run a commercial chicken farm.
01:55Feed, land, and medicine are all needed to raise, slaughter, and ship chickens.
01:59But one of the less considered elements of farming chickens is water consumption.
02:03According to the Water Footprint of Food Guide,
02:05a staggering 520 gallons of water are required to produce one pound of chicken.
02:09By comparison, one pound of corn takes only 148 gallons.
02:13This means that the three-pound pack of chicken breast in your freezer represents
02:16over 1,500 gallons of water consumption. Still, this quantity might seem more reasonable when
02:21you learn that every pound of beef produced consumes a whopping 1,850 gallons of water.
02:26As far as water consumption is concerned,
02:28chicken may actually be one of the better options for farming animals for food.
02:32The terms cage-free, free-range, and pasture-raised are tossed around liberally when
02:36rating the quality of grocery store chicken, and they're often used interchangeably to describe
02:40supposedly humane farming practices. But each label actually means something different in the
02:44chicken farming industry. Cage-free chicken is commonly understood to have been made using
02:48chickens that were free from the 67-square-inch cages generally used in factory farming,
02:52although this doesn't rule out overpopulation on the farm where they're raised.
02:56According to the USDA, free-range chicken is chicken that has continuous free access
03:00to the outside throughout their normal growing cycle. The USDA also says that
03:04pasture-raised chicken must have the same outdoor access for a significant portion of their lives.
03:08One significant problem with these labels is that there are no specific requirements farmers
03:12have to meet in order to use them. The USDA evaluates each claim on a case-by-case basis.
03:17Under these policies, so-called outdoor access could mean as little as a hole chickens can
03:21poke their heads through. Under standards employed by Humane Farm Animal Care,
03:25free-range chickens must have two square feet of space and live outdoors for six or more hours
03:29per day. To earn the pasture-raised label, HFAC requires 108 square feet of space per chicken.
03:34The animals must be outdoors during the day and indoors at night to protect them from predators.
03:39But while the USDA encourages farmers to get their farming practices certified by third parties,
03:43such as HFAC, it's entirely voluntary. Over the last few decades, chickens have been growing larger.
03:54This is due to a process happening behind the scenes to ensure chickens produce as much edible
03:58meat as possible. Selective breeding, the resulting birds have grown by around 130 percent
04:03between the 1950s and mid-2000s, according to a study by the University of Alberta.
04:07Today's chickens are able to process feed to create more breast tissue, resulting in more
04:11meat beneath the cellophane. But this additional tissue is a source of further suffering for
04:15chickens already living in subpar conditions. A 2020 study published by Global Animal Partnership
04:20detailed physical issues for some strains of larger chickens that extend beyond the
04:24general issues found in factory-farmed chickens. These conditions include muscle damage,
04:28heart and lung issues, and contact dermatitis, which compromises the well-being of the bird
04:32and introduces the need for medical intervention to keep the birds healthy.
04:36Keeping high numbers of chicken contained in such close quarters is a perfect way to spread
04:40illnesses that can easily decimate a population. This is why antibiotics are commonly used to
04:44mitigate the spread of disease and save the lives of sick chickens. Luckily, those medicines aren't
04:49going to turn up in your dinner. Chickens exposed to antibiotics are required to undergo a withdrawal
04:54period before being processed into food, and testing is performed to ensure that no antibiotics
04:58are present in chickens taken for slaughter. This ensures that the substances have been removed
05:02from the bird's system when they arrive in grocery stores. So even though antibiotics are used in the
05:07farming process, chicken in the grocery store is considered to be antibiotic-free regardless of
05:11the brand you buy. What's the problem, then? Well, regular use of these drugs has helped
05:15the bacteria they kill to become antibiotic-resistant. Microbes such as E. coli have
05:19developed defenses that prevent antibiotics from destroying them, which endangers other animals,
05:24including humans.
05:25Superbugs are a problem that's getting worse globally."
05:28Many activists agree that better farming conditions are required to reduce the need for
05:32antibiotic use. Continued exposure for factory-farmed chickens means more potential for
05:37superbacteria to cause trouble, the kind of trouble that antibiotics might one day be unable to fix.
05:42Bacteria often turns up in grocery store chicken due to the slaughtering process,
05:46though whether the situation warrants attention is usually based on the microbe in question.
05:50Even cooked chicken products can be exposed to unsafe levels of bacteria,
05:54resulting in millions of pounds of food-grade chicken being recalled by producers under the
05:58direction of the USDA. About 30 percent of grocery store chicken is contaminated
06:02with harmful bacteria such as salmonella. Cooking your chicken thoroughly typically
06:06kills any bacteria, but big food recalls of tainted chicken still result in the
06:10disposal of millions of pounds of product in order to keep consumers safe.
06:13If you've ever paid attention to the alerts issued during a chicken recall,
06:16you'll know that you're usually told to either dispose of the tainted product or
06:19return it to where you bought it. But what happens to the returned meat afterwards?
06:23It may be incinerated or disposed of in a landfill, if local regulations allow.
06:27Given the huge quantity of poultry involved in some recalls, a large amount of space is
06:31needed to safely dispose of tainted product without exposing humans or animals to the
06:35hazardous bacteria. When avian flu reaches a population of chickens in a factory farm setting,
06:40the spread of the disease can easily overwhelm an entire flock. In these nightmare scenarios,
06:44the most direct path to stemming the spread is to kill the chickens in question,
06:48often millions of birds. In spring 2022, CBS News reported that 24 million
06:53chickens had been killed within two months to stem daily outbreaks of the virus.
06:57It's really important to do the best you can to prevent that virus from moving into your flock.
07:02Farmers do their best to kill the birds within 24 hours to prevent exposure to a greater
07:07population, as well as preventing the disease from progressing and causing undue suffering
07:11for the already infected chickens. In addition to the huge numbers of chickens being killed,
07:15the farmers' financial deficit for such an enormous and unexpected loss can easily
07:19become a hardship for the entire operation. If avian flu outbreaks aren't stopped before
07:23spreading, the virus can spread to other chickens on the farm and in the vicinity,
07:27and, as the microbe mutates, to other species. The surge in the H5N1 avian flu strain has
07:32virologists keeping their eyes trained on the possibility of a transition from animals to
07:36humans, which could result in a global pandemic. Unfortunately, the need to act swiftly and
07:40decisively in an avian flu outbreak is the only way to prevent further spread.
07:45Ground chicken can be a healthier option than ground beef where fat and protein are concerned,
07:49although salmonella contamination can be higher in ground chicken than other forms of chicken.
07:53A 2022 test conducted by Consumer Reports found that 30 percent of ground chicken sampled
07:58tested positive for salmonella. According to Consumer Reports,
08:01salmonella in a single chicken can be spread out among a large quantity of ground chicken,
08:05resulting in far-reaching contamination. There's also the possibility of antibiotic-resistant
08:09strains of salmonella evading medications administered to the birds. Add to this the
08:13fact that bacteria are worked into the meat during the grinding process, which makes them
08:17more difficult to reach and kill with direct heat while cooking, and you have a recipe for a
08:20troubled gut. Or worse. So the give and take of opting for chicken over beef may not end up being
08:25such a straightforward transaction after all. All hope is not lost, however. Chicken raised
08:29organically or without antibiotic exposure has been shown to have lower drug-resistant
08:33salmonella counts, a difference that might be worth paying for.
08:37It's worth knowing that one often-touted secret about the chicken industry isn't really true.
08:41The use of growth hormones in chicken breeding. The use of steroids and hormones to produce bigger
08:46fowl for more food sometimes becomes a heated topic. Without understanding how chicken breeding
08:50occurs, it's an easy reach to make. Something has to have happened to make poultry supersized
08:54over the years, and the idea that farmers are injecting chickens with growth hormones
08:58seems like the logical leap. But hormone use in chicken farming was actually banned by the USDA
09:03in the 1950s. Nevertheless, a survey released by the National Chicken Council in 2015 revealed
09:08that upwards of 80 percent of Americans were still under the impression that steroids and
09:12hormones were used in the chicken-producing process. The confusion may arise from the use
09:16of hormones in beef production, which does still happen. In reality, no chickens produced
09:20as part of the food industry contain either steroids or hormones.