Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Chickens are News



Lots of Chickens in the News! On one hand, the public is clamoring for more cheap chicken, which means more birds raised in crowded confinement. The following story is from The Economist:

ROASTED, fried or served with noodles, chicken is on its way to becoming the world’s favourite meat. Diners currently chomp through more pork—some 114m tonnes a year compared with 106m tonnes for poultry. But chicken consumption is growing faster—by 2.5% a year compared with 1.5% for pig meat—and is on track to overtake pork before 2020. And much more chicken is traded across borders: some 13.3m tonnes a year compared with 8.6m tonnes of beef and 7.2m tonnes of pork, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. Chicken is on a roll.
The growing taste for fowl is a result of increasing prosperity in emerging markets, meaning that people can afford to put more meat on the table. Chicken tops the pecking order as the most affordable. It takes far less feed to produce a kilo of chicken than the equivalent amount of pork or beef. And religious strictures that bar beef and pork from cooking pots around the world do not apply to poultry.


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