Why is chicken so cheap?

[Music] chickens are the most populous bird on the planet there are 23 billion of them at any given time that's ten times more than any other bird it's an astonishing achievement for a bird that originated as a small wild jungle bird in Southeast Asia it's by far the fastest growing meat product but pound for pound the price of chicken has fallen sharply how has this happened this farm is at the forefront of a technology revolution that has drastically changed chicken farming it's run by David speller who's pioneered the use of CCTV and co2 monitors in chicken sheds along with his own farm he works as a consultant overseeing the raising of around 3 million chickens in the UK you can't get away from the scale yet there are 45,000 birds in this barn managed by one computer two men will run 200,000 birds for me chickens were first domesticated over 8,000 years ago but it wasn't until the 1940s that major efforts were made to create a super breed the chicken of tomorrow competition in America would change chickens forever the aim of that competition was to try and encourage the development of a fast-growing chicken that could provide a larger amount of protein at an affordable cost the success of the contest proves conclusively that it is possible to breed chickens with superior meat type characteristics today the lifecycle of broilers chickens that are bred purely for their meat is entirely preordained they grow faster and bigger than ever before and they can only live supported by human technology modern industrialized farming requires the use of artificial light artificial temperature the whole life of these birds is controlled chickens have changed so quickly they are now four times the size they were in the 1950s ninety thousand chicks at a time get delivered it's our job to nurture them and farm them up to a bird that's then ready to go back to processing that starts around day 34 the biggest bird for us off of this farmer around 39 days of age then we have a really frantic 7 to 10 days to clean everywhere to get it all nice and warm and fresh ready for the next batch of chicks we do that seven and a half eight times a year this efficiency is passed on to the consumer it's good value I don't like referring to it as cheap these are not cheap these are animals they have a worth but it is great value it is uniform it's healthy for you and consumers love it the reality of farming any animal for meat is you take it to its optimal place and then you take it to turn it for human consumption please birds 38:39 days is as far as we want to take them for the product that we want to buy a barnyard chicken can live up to 10 years showing the huge evolutionary change the broilers have undergone but selective breeding and a global scale comes at a cost if the chickens live beyond their planned life they develop huge medical problems these birds can't then sustain that rapid weight growth beyond the point at which they normally slaughtered because their bodies can't cope with it and it also puts huge amounts of pressure on as well and there are concerns the chicken industry is relying on an increasingly small gene pool pretty chicks yes sir alike as two peas in a pod if all of these chickens have the same genetics they're all fed the same food they're actually very vulnerable to diseases that come in because they're all identical so if one bird is affected all the birds would be affected keeping chickens in battery cages was banned in the EU in 2012 but some people want to create better lives for broiler chickens free-range birds have more access to open air runs while organic chickens are typically free from antibiotics hormones and other synthetic chemicals organic chickens get to live the longest 81 days compared to intensively reared birds which live between 35 and 40 days free-range chickens get the most access to open air runs but when it comes to living space organic and free-range fur far better than intensively reared birds where as many as 17 adult birds live in a single square metre organic farming might offer animals a greater quality of life but consumers are largely driven by cost and in an average UK supermarket an intensively reared chicken cost several times less than its free-range organic cousins you are talking significant cost difference and I think that's why we've seen the demand is not there if the demand was there we'd all be doing it over 95% of broiler chickens are intensively rid in the UK organic and free-range chickens make up the rest to watch key for me in being a farmer of chicken is to understand what the consumer wants to buy we are purely market driven for as long as shoppers want cheap and plentiful chicken they will continue to be bred ever more intensively [Music] you

Channel: The Economist

Views: 4,067,446

Keywords: chicken prices, chickens, chicks, chicken industry, economics, food prices, chicken, chicken price, the economist, economist, news, politics, short-documentsry, raising chickens, backyard chickens, chicken coop, 经济学人

Id: JiYVoHEV5hs

Length: 6min 24sec (384 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019