When Peterson was a child, a typical chicken would take around four months to reach its slaughter weight of 2.5 pounds. Growth rates began to crank upwards in the 1950s, and by the 1970s, as Peterson rose to the heights of his reputation, the chicken was well on its way to becoming a new beast — one featuring a “distinctive new morphotype,” according to scientists. Today, chickens reach 5 pounds in two months, while consuming less food. (View Highlight)
The domesticated chicken — Gallus gallus domesticus — had meanwhile been turned into one of the planet’s most important animals: our most-consumed meat. With a global standing population of at least 25 billion, these birds outnumber every other vertebrate species. The total standing biomass of domesticated poultry is around three times higher than the biomass of all wild birds combined (View Highlight)
Roughly 12,000 years ago, people in the Middle East began to shift the way they preyed on animals. Hunters realized that rather than roaming a wide territory in search of prey, they could steer the beasts into a smaller area — where, as a bonus, the animals could be protected against predation by rival predators and harvested in a way that allowed them to reproduce. Thus, gradually, began the process of domestication (View Highlight)
Consider that again: The world’s most abundant vertebrate is a product supplied by just two corporations. At this point, the chicken might be the most domesticated animal on Earth (View Highlight)
Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of Farm Forward, a nonprofit that advocates for safer, healthier and more humane agricultural practices, argued that it hardly matters where such a chicken spends its life. Cornish Cross hens need so much help from humans that they may lead better lives if kept indoors, he said. Studies have found that the greatest factor impacting a chicken’s welfare is its breed. The cruelty, in other words, is inscribed at the genetic level (View Highlight)