Health News - June 2012

The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

By Jim Giza

Americans love to eat chicken and their eggs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans consumed almost 85 pounds of chicken in 2011. This is 84 percent more than the per capita consumption of pork and 46 percent more than beef. The National Chicken Council (NCC) 2012 Wing Report (yes, there is such a report) estimates that in 2012 more than 3 billion pounds of wings alone will be marketed as “chicken wings,” as opposed buying chickens or breast quarters with the wings attached.
This wing-eating goal got jumpstarted when an estimated 100 million pounds were eaten during this past Super Bowl weekend. As noted in the NCC report, if the Ravens had played the Giants, we would have had the perfect storm of wing-eating, apparently because the South Atlantic region chicken-eaters, including Ravens fans, were considered 27 percent more likely to surpass the 23 percent national average for chowing down on wings during this time frame.
Makes you proud to know.
And if the Super Bowl wing-eating frenzy isn't enough to convince you that chicken-wing eating is as American as apple pie and ingrained in our pop culture, there is the Wing Bowl held this past February in Philadelphia where to the delight of 20,000 fans, the Japanese eating champ, Kobayashi, scarfed down 337 wings, courtesy of 168 chickens, in 30 minutes and won $20,000. What a guy.
And when it comes to eggs, Americans put away an estimated 20 dozen plus per capita in 2011 according to the United Egg Producers.

Mega Farms, Mega Concerns
But now the question to be answered is whether recent investigations into how mega chicken farms raise many of these birds will prompt the American finger-lickin’ public to look elsewhere for their chicken fix, opting to go organic or find local farm-raised birds, organic or not.
Two recent studies, one by the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future in the School of Public Health, published in the February 15 issue of Science of the Total Environment, and another out of Arizona State University published in the March 21 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, examine feather meal. Feather meal is processed from poultry feathers, ground into powder, and used as animal feed—chickens included. As highlighted in an April 4 New York Times opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof, chicken feathers, like human fingernails, accumulate residues of drugs and chemicals that the birds ingest. Apparently factory birds—and, thus, possibly humans—are getting a dose of arsenic. Arsenic makes meat pink and healthy looking and kills parasites, and while it occurs naturally in the environment, it is a toxic cancer-causing element and can contribute to heart disease and diabetes. In addition to arsenic, the researchers found illegal antibiotics, as well as acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol), Benadryl, an antihistamine used to reduce anxiety, (stressed chickens produce tough meat), antidepressants, and caffeine. The latter is from coffee pulp and green tea powder fed to chickens to keep them awake and eating.

And then there’s the egg laying birds’ nightmares.
This past February and March, The Humane Society of the United States conducted an undercover investigation at Kreider Farms. With 7 million hens spread over four farms, Kreider is the largest egg producer in Pennsylvania. At its Manheim location, the investigator found rotting chicken corpses in cages with egg laying hens, piles of dead hens on barn floors, rodents on the conveyor belts, thousands of hens dying after not having water over a two to three day period, hens decapitated by automatic feeding carts, and mummified hen carcasses in cages. Provided with 54-58 inches of living space, as many as 11 hens were living in a cage 2 feet square.
On the upside, at the time of this writing, Maryland may be set to be the first state to ban arsenic in chicken feed, something already outlawed in Canada and the European Union. (One day we’ll catch up to the rest of the developed world.)

If you have the desire and wherewithal to take charge of your and your family's eating preferences, you might be interested in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).  In a CSA model, consumers buy directly from a regional farmer by paying up front for a share in the season’s harvest. This helps cover production costs and ensures a steady market by helping smaller farmers remain in business. Alternatively, many local farms operate stores at their farms or attend local farmers’ markets where they sell their chicken and eggs. For a listing of local farms that you can approach about insuring your food is fresh and animals are humanely treated, go to www.marylandagriculture.com or marylandsbest.net. BC 

© Baltimore’s Child Inc. June 2012