“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
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As I have mentioned before, I farm in service of gourmet fetishism. There are some things that are simply not on offer at the supermarket. Among these is suitable chicken. Even as consumer demand has led to entry into the market of “free range” chicken, and “organic” offerings, my personal standards are not met. If you want to buy the finest bird to be found in a grocery store, you must visit a higher end retailer, such as Whole Foods. There you will find a cruelty-free, organic, free-range, gluten-free (really?), fair-trade chicken. It will cost you around $30, and though it may taste slightly better than the commodity bird for sale at the lower end stores, it bares no resemblance to a chicken I want to eat.
Let’s walk through the life of the finest bird the convetional market can provide. It's hard to know exactly what goes on in theses poultry operations, as the farmers must sign NDA's with the label. Big Ag lobyists have been successful in crafting laws criminalizing exposing the conditions in these operations. What follows is as acurate a depiction as I can surmise from my research. Chicken breeders cross chicken varieties to produce birds that gain weight rapidly, with an emphasis on breast size. This is in response to that same half century lipid delusion covered in my lard post. The boneless, skinless chicken breast continues to rule the roost, as it were, in the chicken market. This market pressure has driven the breeding priorities to the detriment of the bird, and the diner. The meat bird of a hundred years ago typically was raised for 120 or so days, and had a slaughter weight of about 2.5 pounds. The modern Cornish cross bird (which may well be the only breed 99.99% of Americans have ever tasted) is harvested at 45 days, and weighs 5 pounds. When these birds hatch from their eggs, they are boxed up as day old chicks and shipped to the growers. The growers are almost invariably indentured to a multinational corporate entity that has tricked them into a contractual arrangement that leaves them in constant debt and out of control of their own practices. Everything from the feed to the ventilation systems in the grow house is prescribed by the label. Just when these farmers think they might start turning a decent profit, the label changes the infrastructure requirements and drives them deeper into debt.
Tens of thousands of these chicks are dumped on to the floor of a large metal building. Well, ok, not the floor so much as several feet of chicken shit and dead chickens, as these huts are only mucked every third batch, or so. As these are “organic, free-range birds”, they receive no growth hormones, antibiotics, or GMO feeds. Still, they eat corn and soy, and little else. Soy is a problem. It acts as an estrogen mimic in the body. Some people have strong reactions to soy, and animal products raised on soy. Soy is thought to turn on cancer genes and may be part of the cause in spiking breast and cervical cancer rates. I know, lets make it the foundation of animal feed! Better yet, let’s make baby formula out of it! The estrogen mimicking expression of soy may have large societal impacts beyond health, as well. Perhaps some of the loss of toughness in our male population is tied to excess estrogen, just sayin… Anyhow, these “top-shelf” birds gobble this stuff up in the absence of sun light, breathing nothing but aerosolized chicken manure dust, day after day. The industry standard mortality rate is 10-15%. The ones that die are often just trampled into the shit-cake. There is no room in the budget to pay someone to slip on a HAZMAT suit and a respirator to walk the coop everyday looking for dead birds.
I know what you’re thinking, at this point. “But, I thought we were talking about ‘free-range’ chickens”. Sadly, we are. The USDA owns that term, now, just as they claim to own the term “organic”. You can’t legally use these words to market your products without complying with their mandates. In the case of “free-range” the USDA decrees that the birds “must have access to the outside, for some portion of their lives”. That’s it. Really. When we outsource due diligence regarding our food standards to the state, we get what we deserve, and then we have to eat it. What “free-range” actually looks like is a 10x15 foot concrete slab caged in cyclone fence. There is a tiny door in one corner of this massive coop that leads to the “yard”. This door is opened only during the last seven of the 45 miserable days these chicken will be alive. They don’t use it. Chickens are habitual creatures. A sudden bright light coming from the corner is terrifying to them, so they squeeze together, in their now wing-to-wing confinement, to avoid it. That’s great, in the eyes of the producer, as if one of these sorrowful, unhealthy creatures were to actually go outside, and a pathogenic microbe were to happen by on the breeze, it could infect the whole lot upon re-entry. Because these birds are “organic” no anti-biotic could be given, and 50,000 birds would die.
But wait, the horrors continue. The 45th day has arrived, and now the birds are off to the slaughterhouse. Workers, who certainly care little for their comfort, stuff the birds into crates. Legs and wings are broken. Chicken panic fills the air. The level of terror among the population spikes and remains extreme for the duration of their experience. The crates are loaded onto trucks and delivered to the UDSA approved processing facility. From here, they are loaded, alive, onto hooks that carry them down the disassembly line. They are electrocuted to death, decapitated with shears, scalded, plucked, eviscerated by a mechanical claw (rupturing bowels and gallbladders, spilling sewage all over the meat) then dunked into a vat of bleach water to kill the teaming cocktail of salmonella, E. coli, and who-knows-what that being processed in a vector for hundreds of thousands of birds a day has coated them with. Yum. The ones that are just too horrid to sell as whole birds are parted out. The parts that are still too ugly to sell are mixed with more soy and corn derived additives, fried in GMO canola oil (stabilized with silicone) and feed to your children as school lunch. The best birds are shrink wrapped with a chicken maxi-pad and a picture of a storybook farm on the label, and shipped off to your boutique grocer. That’ll be $28.49, please.
I don’t know about you, but I want better. Let’s look at the life of a pastured broiler. For the moment, the government doesn’t own the term “pastured broiler”. As far as I know, Joel Salatin coined it. The USDA has nothing to do with it, and hopefully it will stay that way (not likely). Presently, I raise the same Cornish cross bird that the big ag boys use. I have run other breeds like freedom or red rangers. I’ve been using the Cornish because the legs are tenderer, and my customers seem to like them. I may try some heritage French breeds this year, but let’s just look at the same bird, managed differently, for now. I get the day-old chicks in the mail, down at the post office. Invariably some little girl, waiting in line with her mom, hears the peeping and wants a look. I squat down with the box and open it up. She squeals and asks if she can hold one. I help her pick one up and watch as she gently rubs the little fluff ball against her cheek. Back at the farm, I transfer the baby birds into the brooder. I use a wire cage tucked into a loafing shed with wood shavings for bedding, a heat lamp, a feeder, and water. I check each bird, as I unload it. One or two tend to arrive dead and the hatcheries include a few spares for this reason. The first 72 hours is the trickiest time, and I watch their behavior to make sure the heat lamp is at just the right height to keep them warm without piling up on top of each other. They are protected from the wind and the rain, but they are outside in the fresh air. They stay in the brooder for three weeks, as they molt their fuzzy down and set adult feathers. The bedding stays clean (a daily chore, toward the end) and they have access to feed from dawn till dusk, and plenty of clean water.
At three weeks, they move out to the pasture. I use 6’x10’chicken tractors to house my birds. They are loosely modeled after John Suscovich’s design. He sells plans on his website, if you’re interested. Each one holds about 40 birds comfortably, but I only put about 30 in each. The pasture is planted with a poly-culture of cover crops high in omega-3 fatty acid rich plants. There is flax, millet, rye, clover, and about 10 other varieties in this mix. The nutrient quality of this blend transfers to the meat and fat of my birds. I supplement their feed with a non-corn/non-soy organic chicken feed delivered to my place by a Fehringer Farms in Sydney, Nebraska. Over the next five weeks, one hundred birds will eat half a ton of the stuff, as they work their way through the pasture. Every day I move them onto fresh grass. They eat it, along with worms, bugs, and just about anything else that crawls along. Chickens are omnivorous dinosaurs. They are not meant to live on an “all vegetarian diet”. That phrase was added to egg cartons after it was exposed that egg producers were feeding ground up diseased chickens back to their living chickens, in the 1970’s. Seriously. They bask in the sun; have dust baths, and generally chicken around, all day. It only takes a couple of days for them to understand that when I show up in the morning, fresh pasture is coming. As I roll the tractors forward, they rush to the front to get the goodies in the fresh ground. They have plenty of shade, protection from the rain, and clean water. By the end of their fourth week, they totally accept my presence and will come sit in my lap if I’m in the tractor with them.
When they are around eight weeks old (mine take longer because no soy), its graduation day. Every one gets a trip into the freezer. Around 10:00 am, after morning chores are done, my beautiful and hilarious farmer cohorts begin arriving for processing day. As the scalding water heats in a big pot in the fire, we catch up over pastries and coffee. Once the shade canopy is raised over my granite processing table, and everything has been washed down with a strong vinegar solution, the work begins. Two birds at a time are collected from the tractors. If you squat down and wait, they walk right over to you, and can be scooped up. If you hold two against each other, they don’t even fuss much. At the kill station, they are inverted into killing cones, such that just their heads poke out the bottom. And exquisitely sharp knife finds the featherless spot just beyond the jaw, and the arteries on either side of the neck are opened. The trachea and esophagus are left intact and the bird bleeds out, without suffocating. At the end of a perfectly lovely life, the bird as one brief moment of discomfort. They really don’t even have time to get worked up. When all movement stops, they get a dunk in the hot tub for 15 seconds at 150F. This loosens the feathers for plucking. Two at a time, they take a ride in the plucker. Fifteen seconds later, they are naked and now look like food.
At the processing table, feet and heads are removed then necks are sliced open to loosen the crop (that holds food waiting for digestion). A small slit is made in the belly, and the skin is opened to expose the entrails. Ever so carefully the liver, gizzard, and intestines are removed. The gallbladder is pinched from the liver, and discarded for composting with the guts. Livers and hearts go on ice, as do feet and necks. The cleaned bird is rinsed and goes into a barrel of ice water to drop its temperature quickly. After about an hour, we hit our stride, and the work settles into jokes, laughter, and gratitude. When all the birds are done, we bag, weigh, and freeze them. It’s a long day, but the freezer is filled, and everyone goes home with chicken.
The end result is a chicken that hardly resembles that grocery store premium bird. The skin is pink. The fat is yellow from the chlorophyll of green grass. It smells fresh. The feet and necks are roasted, simmered with herbs and vegetables, and made into stock. I reduce this and pressure can it. The organ meats become iron and B-12 rich dinners and påté. The feathers, blood, and intestines are composted to feed the gardens. The pasture is mowed and fertilized, and ready for one hundred more chickens. The commercial bird is pale. It’s fat is an anemic pasty hue. It smells slightly of bleach and urine. It never lay in the sun, ate a worm, or had a breath of fresh air, but hey, it’s organic, right?
The aroma of a pastured chicken roasting is absolutely intoxicating. The natural life in the sun, on grass, adds complexities to the flavor. When people describe flavorless things as “tasting like chicken”, that is only because they have never had chicken. It’s amazing, and it gives me a total tummy high. There are more nerve endings in our digestive systems than in our brains. When you fill your stomach with something this good, you can feel it alter your mood and warm your soul. I have raised broiler chickens in suburban backyards. A dozen or so can sneak under the radar, even where the state (county/HOA) grants not permission for you to feed yourself. They are pretty quiet, and done before the roosters even start crowning. If you can’t raise your own, find a local pastured poultry producer. Ask around Farmer’s markets. Go see how the farm raises birds. Help out on processing day. Like a garden fresh tomato, there is no comparison between what you raise, and what’s in the store!
If you want to know a great thing to do with a chicken of this quality, come back to Radical Gastronomy! My next post will cover how to roast a chicken with some thoughts on getting the most out of your bird!
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