23 Billion Chickens...

This number took me by surprise: at any given moment there are 23 billion chickens alive on the planet, and we humans eat 65 billion of them each year. Chicken truly is the rich world's most popular meat...

_{Image by Eli Duke - source:}

Here's some more startling facts about the the most populous and most popular bird in the world:

• chickens account for 23 of the 30 billion land animals living on farms,
• chickens were first domesticated over 8,000 years ago but it wasn't until the 1940s that major efforts were made to create a super breed,
• barnyard chickens live up to ten years, while the super breed lives between 35 and 40 days before it's ready for the slaughterhouse,
• 17 intensively reared chickens occupy 1 square meter.

There was a contest in America, called the "Chicken of Tomorrow 1948 national contest", which apparently was the start of the search for ever more efficient ways to breed chickens. The objective was to develop a fast growing chicken that could provide a larger amount of proteins in a cost-effective way. This has set the chicken on a path to becoming a life-form that cannot survive without human aid, and has a completely planned life of 35 to 40 days. And they grow to 4 times the size of their 1950 counterparts.

The facilities where they are held, aren't cleaned until after they're sent of to the slaughterhouse, so all their life is spent sitting in their own excrement, which leaves them full of acid-burns and arrests feather-growth. If they survive and live beyond their planned lifespan, they develop severe medical problems. Selective breeding has resulted in the carefully manufactured super breed we have now, but they are also genetically identical; if one of them catches a disease, it's likely that soon all of them will be sick.

Only 5% of all chickens are bred organically, and have double the lifespan plus a lot more space. This is a reflection of our consumption habits in an economy that's run by supply and demand; as long as consumers want cheap chicken, ever more intensive breeding will be the result. Watch the video below; it's the one that got me thinking again. This chicken horror story in my mind raises the question again: is capitalism really the best we can do? Is the drive for profits really the best thing to organize an enlightened society around? I bet 23 billion chickens have an answer...

_{Why is chicken so cheap? | The Economist}

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