THE AMAZING STORY OF BIG CHICKEN
How
did chicken take over the world’s diet? Industrial farming is a big
part of it. But secret sauce is 63,000 tons of antibiotics every year.
This insight comes from Maryn McKenna in her new book – Big Chicken.
Before those innovations, hens were just leftovers from egg production
and “a chicken in every pot” was an empty political promise reports
ConscienHealth’s Ted Kyle.
When you put antibiotics in a
chicken’s food, they grow big and fat. So farmers can make an abundant
supply of plump chickens on an industrial scale. Now, Americans eat far
more chicken than any other meat. And farms dump millions of pounds of
antibiotics into the environment. Most of it goes into chicken manure,
which in turn becomes fertilizer for plant crops. The circle of farm
life has become a circle of antibiotics.
McKenna tells the story of Acronized® chicken from the 1950s. American
Cyanamid promoted – and trademarked – its chicken soaked in antibiotics
for a longer shelf life:
They dipped all the chicken in the US in a bath of antibiotics and
sealed it up in packages and thought it would last for a month on the
shelf and people could eat it and be fine? Were they crazy? To me that
story was really the purest distillation of this uncomplicated belief
that science was going to make our lives better.
The
problem goes beyond antibiotic resistant superbugs. Dumping all these
antibiotics into the environment raises the possibility of contributing
to the rise of obesity prevalence.
Lee Riley and colleagues explained this theory in a 2013 paper.
They estimate that as much as 18 million pounds of antibiotics from
animal farming go into the environment. They describe evidence for how
antibiotics can move from environment and into the food chain. And thus,
they explain the possible link to obesity: “We propose that chronic
exposures to low-residue antimicrobial drugs in food could disrupt the
equilibrium state of intestinal microbiota and cause dysbiosis that can
contribute to changes in body physiology. The obesity epidemic in the
United States may be partly driven by the mass exposure of Americans to
food containing low-residue antimicrobial agents.”
Ultimately,
McKenna sees hope in the story of big chicken and antibiotics.
Business, economics, and regulators might have failed. But consumers are
succeeding. People are demanding chicken produced without antibiotics.
McDonald’s is making a big move in that direction. In turn, it’s
exerting a big influence on the rest of the industry.
The
move away from antibiotics in chicken can be a case study for beef and
pork production. Consumer demand for antibiotic-free meat is growing.
Even in China, government is pushing for changes in meat production.
It’s a work in progress.
