Chicken was a rich man's dish in 1800s America before it conquered the world
In nineteenth-century America chicken cost more than other meats and was prized by the wealthy precisely because it was rare. A post-war breeding drive changed that. By 2021 chicken had become the most produced meat on the planet, edging out pork, and chickens outnumbered people more than two to one.
The birds on our plates descend from red junglefowl hybrids, with grey junglefowl in the mix, first kept thousands of years ago in the north of the Indian subcontinent. Babylonian carvings from around 600 BC show chicken as food, and in medieval Europe it was among the commonest meats. It anchored blancmange, a dish of chicken and fried onions stewed in milk with spices and sugar. Capons, castrated cockerels that put on more and fattier flesh, were a prized medieval delicacy.
The American price only fell after shortages of beef and pork during the Second World War pushed people toward poultry. Afterwards the USDA, the grocery chain A&P and others launched a search for the chicken of tomorrow, applying the breeding methods of the agriculturist Robert Bakewell. The result, in the late 1940s, was the Cornish Rock Cross: fast to raise, good to eat and efficient at turning feed into meat. Such broilers can go to slaughter at eight weeks as fryers.
Food scares also shifted tastes. In Europe chicken overtook beef and veal in 1996 as awareness of mad cow disease grew. Worldwide meat output reached 357 million tonnes in 2021, up 53 percent on 2000, and chicken supplied more than half of that growth. The United Nations estimated 19 billion chickens alive in 2011. Fast-growing breeds such as the Ross 308 dominate, though some countries are moving to slower-growing birds or tougher welfare rules, since chickens are recognised as able to feel pain and distress.
Nothing much is wasted. Feet, prized for skin and cartilage, are everyday fare in China, Vietnam and the Caribbean; Ashkenazi cooks stuff the neck to make helzel; rendered fat becomes schmaltz. Industrial methods have drawn scrutiny too. Makers withdrew the arsenic-based feed additive roxarsone from FDA approval in 2013, and studies have linked antibiotic use in poultry to resistant bacteria found on supermarket meat.
Source: Chicken as food
