Currently browsing posts about: Chickens

Gina A. Warren.  Hatched: Dispatches from the Backyard Chicken Movement.  University of Washington Press, 2021. 

I did a blurb for this book:

Hatched is Gina Warren’s exceptionally thoughtful account of raising backyard chickens from chicks to dinner, with dumpster diving in between–actions that reflect her deep respect and care for the animals we eat and her profound commitment to living ethically.

Here’s what she says it’s about:

Backyard chickens are still on the rise, partially because the style of living they exemplify rebels against modern metropolis ails; in the wake of stresses about increasing urbanization, environmental collapse, GMO foods, and kids growing up with their fingers on screens instead of in the dirt, chickens are an all-inclusive reprieve.  Chicken people tend to have concerns about the environment, industrial food, and the economy of commercial agriculture.  By owning chickens, people perform a feat of micro-resistance against society’s dominant forms of consumption and production and create a counter-narrative to the story that food, something we all require on a daily basis, can only be produced by certain industries in sequestered places.

This book is a welcome addition to others about the backyard chicken movement, a subset of the greater food movement.

It extols the pleasures of getting to know the hens that produce daily eggs, and those of hens scratching around in the grass as compared to those raised in enclosed barns housing 50,000.

Backyard chickens are a privilege.

President Biden has blocked the Trump Administration’s allowance of increased speeds on poultry processing lines.

I first heard about this from an announcement from Food and Water Watch.

As described by The Counter, the Trump rule allowed facilities “to slaughter chickens at a rate of 175 birds per minute—equivalent to 3 birds a second—up from the industry standard of 140 birds per minute.”  

As the Washington Post describes, poultry processing plants with higher line speeds are more dangerous for workers.

The history of the rule changes over the past few years is given on the USDA website.

But line speeds are only one of the problems with poultry safety.  Salmonella is another.  The history of attempts to reduce Salmonella in poultry is summarized by Michael Taylor, former USDA official, at FoodSafetyNews.com: “Our poultry safety regulation isn’t working: It’s past time to fix it.”

This is why food safety groups have filed a petition

urging FSIS [USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service] to modernize its food safety standards by establishing enforceable standards targeting Salmonella types of greatest public health concern while reducing all Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry. We also ask that FSIS ensure the safety of the food supply chain from farm to fork by requiring slaughter establishments to adopt and implement effective supply chain programs, and by publishing finalized versions of its “DRAFT FSIS Compliance Guidance for Controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter in Raw Poultry.”

Biden’s first 100 days seems like a terrific opportunity to make poultry production safer for workers and for people who eat the poultry produced in these plants.

The CDC reports that more than 1000 people have been infected with a toxic form of Salmonella, almost certainly from contact with backyard poultry.

Among these cases of illness, 23% are among children under the age of 5 years.

The link to backyard poultry comes from epidemiologic and laboratory evidence.

The CDC warns owners of backyard poultry to take steps to avoid acquiring Salmonella from their poultry

This problem has become so serious that the CDC has a webpage devoted to the safety of backyard poultry.

Best to follow its advice.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, explains in The Atlantic Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Your Meat.

You really should read the whole thing.  It’s a powerful indictment.  Here are a few excerpts. 

• The immigration raid last week at seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi was a perfect symbol of the Trump administration’s racism, lies, hypocrisy, and contempt for the poor. It was also a case study in how an industry with a long history of defying the law has managed to shift the blame and punishment onto workers.
• What Trump has described as an immigrant “invasion” was actually a corporate recruitment drive for poor, vulnerable, undocumented, often desperate workers.
• The immigrant workers arrested in Mississippi the other day were earning about $12.50 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, during the late 1970s, the wages of meatpacking workers in Iowa and Colorado were about $50 an hour.
• Over the years, I’ve spent time with countless farmworkers and meatpacking workers who entered the United States without proper documentation. Almost all of them were hardworking and deeply religious. They had taken enormous risks and suffered great hardships on behalf of their families. Today workers like them are the bedrock of our food system. And they are now being scapegoated, hunted down, and terrorized at the direction of a president who inherited about $400 million from his father, watches television all day, and employs undocumented immigrants at his golf resorts.

As readers of this blog should know by now, I’m a big fan of food safety lawyer Bill Marler, whose blog keeps me up to date on food safety matters.

He posted recently on a Salmonella outbreak caused by contact with backyard chickens.

The CDC keeps track of such things.  By its count,

A total of 279 people infected with the outbreak strains of Salmonella have been reported from 41 states.

• 40 (26%) people have been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported.
• 70 (30%) people are children younger than 5 years.

The CDC’s advice:

I was interested in Marler’s account because I knew that he had backyard chickens at his place near Seattle.

Here’s what he says about that:

We have had hens in our backyard since just after the DeCoster egg debacle in 2010.  I clean the chicken house about twice a month and the shoes and clothes I wear are removed before going inside.  I wear a mask and gloves when I clean and either wash my hands well or take a shower.  I do not pick up the chickens unless they are ill, and I wash my hands after I do.  I wash the eggs and refrigerate then.  They tend to get used within the week.

I do my best to think about the possibility of cross-contamination with Salmonella and/or Campylobacter.  So far, so good.

Good advice.

I subscribe to GlobalMeatNews.com’s daily newsletter to find out what’s going on in the international meat market.  Here is a sample of the type of issues it covers.

Special Edition: Focus on Poultry

The global poultry market is heating up with some major consolidation taking place. This focus on poultry looks at MHP and Cargill’s expansion plans as well as Costco’s decision to move up the food chain and manage its own supply. We also look at which countries are becoming the big players in poultry.

• MHP plans to acquire Perutnina Ptuj: Ukrainian poultry producer MHP has announced that it is seeking to acquire meat processor Perutnina Ptuj… Read
• Costco takes control of meat supply chain: Retailer Costco is setting a new “protein precedent” for the US market by taking ownership of the chicken supply chain from farm to fork, a new report from CoBank Knowledge Exchange has revealed… Read
• Global poultry market facing challenges: The growing incidents of African Swine Fever (ASF) across the globe could have a knock-on effect on the international poultry market… Read
• Cargill to acquire Konspol: Processor Cargill has reached an agreement to acquire Konspol, a leading Polish value-added food company… Read
• Asia driving global poultry growth: With poultry predicted to become the most consumed meat in the world in the next few years, where will this growth come from?.. Read
• Jamaican Broilers Group grows US presence: Poultry processor Jamaica Broilers Group has expanded further into the US with the acquisition of a feed mill in Georgia for an undisclosed sum… Read
• Singapore fresh chicken distributors fined S$27m: Thirteen fresh chicken distributors have been fined a total of S$27m (Singapore dollars) for anti-competitive behaviour and price-fixing… Read
• Canada resists US pressure to weaken poultry supply management system: Canada’s Government has been talking tough about protecting the country’s supply management system, as negotiators conduct what might be the final round of talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the United States and Mexico… Read
• Hong Kong reports human case of AI in China: Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection has revealed that a 42-year-old man from Guangxi, China has been infected with H5N6 avian influenza (AI) after handling poultry… Read
• Master Good set to expand Kisvárda plant: Hungarian poultry processor Master Good is to embark on a HUF15 billion (bn) expansion plan for its Kisvárda plant, aided by a Government grant of HUF3.4bn… Read

Bryant Simon The Hamlet Fire, A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives. The New Press.

This book, which deserves a much better cover, tells a compelling story.  Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University, has written an epic book about industrialized broiler production.  His starting point is the tragic fire that killed 25 people in a poultry processing plant in 1991, in Hamlet, North Carolina.

It’s inconceivable that this plant, which made cheap chicken fingers for fast food outlets, had locked exit doors—nearly a century after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (which is still commemorated every March 25 in front of the building, now owned by NYU).

To explain the meaning of the fire, Simon takes on globalization’s effect in promoting industrialized chicken production; the loss of well paying jobs in small rural communities led to surplus labor that made it possible to produce cheap chicken and even cheaper chicken products.

Simon links these events to the increasing prevalence of obesity among overworked and underpaid laborers in rural communities.   His stories of workers in chicken processing plants make it clear how they have to deal with the social, racial, and political issues that confront families in rural America.

The costs of cheap food, Simon says eloquently, are borne by the workers and communities that produce it.