Life at the factory farm: poultry progress

The vast majority of Americans eat meat, but with some qualms. An industry survey earlier this year found that 67 percent want to know more about the path their protein took to the table.

Mostly, this is about chickens. The world eats nearly 80 billion chickens a year, vastly outnumbering cattle, pigs, sheep, turkeys, ducks, and goats put together. And they don’t live well. They have been bred to grow so fast and so breast-meat heavy that many can’t stand up. Egg-laying hens have been kept in cages so small they can’t move. Male chicks – not suitable for meat or laying eggs – are killed immediately.

But life has been looking up on the poultry farm. Nearly half of all hens in the US are now raised cage-free. In Europe, the number is 62 percent. Sweden is 100 percent cage-free. And cage-free suppliers are expanding in Brazil, China, and Malaysia.

Meanwhile, new technology has enabled sexing chicks in the egg, so males are never incubated in the first place. Culling male chicks is now illegal in several European countries and the technology is spreading to others.

Progress on raising slower-growing, and healthier and presumably happier, chicken breeds has been slower because it is more expensive. But hundreds of companies, and a couple of European countries, are signed on for it.

Sources: “Power of Meat 2026” report; Emma Varvaloucas, “What Could Go Right?”