Food and Wine
America’s chicken sandwich wars—including the breakout success of Popeyes Chicken Sandwich and the emergence of Chick-fil-A as possibly the most important chain in the current fast food landscape—has been fantastic for our country’s taste buds, but not necessarily great for America’s chicken supply. And specifically, the smallest chickens are apparently in the biggest demand.
The correlation between smaller chickens and tastier food is not a new revelation: Wendy’s made headlines by announcing an investment to shift to smaller birds in an effort to improve texture and juiciness back in 2017. It turns out they were ahead of what has become a rapidly steepening curve. As everyone remembers, Popeyes infamously had to pull its chicken sandwich from stores for months, and Bloomberg now reports that’s specifically because they couldn’t get enough of these smaller birds to fulfill the rabid demand. And the business site suggests things are only going to get worse from here. More
Are they supposed to allow them a long and fulfilling life before eating them?
When I was a kid back in BC there were chicken ranches all over southern California but they were driven out by developers.
That probably explains why I keep seeing more and more chickens in the gym working out.
It’s illegal to eat big chickens – like Schitt, Nadler, Pelosi, Romney, Collins, Warren, BS, Hoyer, Schumer, and … uhh … wait … my bad … they’re chicken-SHITS … not chickens …
(chickens have a purpose, after all)
izlamo delenda est …
Haven’t been to Chic-fil-A since they went woke. Used to drive across town any time the kids wanted to go there. Now they are just another meal option and we have a Popeyes right by our home that is a training store for their regional managers. It rocks.
All mass produced commercial chickens are variations of a Cornish cross, None are significantly smaller. Smaller just
means butchered younger.
Hey,Time to start a chicken farm.
The grocery store I shop at sells “fresh young chicken” as the only option, and has been doing so for as long as I can remember, at least 15-20 years.
My new flock is only 4 birds strong, they are almost a year old. 4 fresh eggs every single morning by 8am. Much better than 4 quick meals, IMO. The coop REEKS like shit and I gotta give ’em water and food every day, so there’s that. Wish global warming would piss off and freeze the smell, it is winter after all and I don’t clean the coop in winter.
…hey, the Chinese restaurants are doing what they can to reduce chicken usage…
https://youtu.be/NmXxrMC5Pv4
So? This is a problem? I don’t see the problem. This is a case of free market capitalism, competition and correction.
Too few chickens? Price goes up all along the production line.
Price goes up? Original chicken producers expand their business, more new people enter the market to raise young chickens and people stop buying the end product, chicken sammiches.
More people enter the market to raise chickens, price goes down.
Price goes (too far) down, more people return to buy chicken sammiches, the incompetent chicken (farmers? ranchers?) go bankrupt.
Eventually, price of chickens and sammiches settles at close to the original price.
This all takes time, a year or two.
Right about now, Epstein wishes he was into young chickens instead of young chicks.
I say – I say
I think the trend in encouraging.
Media. Everything is a crisis.
Q) What goes “Cluck, cluck, boom?”
A) A chicken in a mine field.
Myself, I have always preferred smaller breasts……….
Hate to be negative but some places chickens are being raised in buildings with automated feeders and water, wall to wall chickens. If a restaurant chain advertises organic chicken I might get excited but I know it’s expensive. Few years ago we had our own chickens and ours needed to be stewed as they got too old. Son and husband did the bad part and I helped with the gutting. The roosters had huge testicles and were they ever mean! The hens were sweet and one became a ‘pet’ who would come running when I called. So cute! And we picked raspberries together. Would peck my hand to get a berry, hard but not to hurt. Then peck my leg when she wanted more. She liked a ripe tomato on a hot day. Had to go in chicken tractor at night to keep away from coyotes. Chicko was our last one and she died naturally and declined very rapidly over 2 days. We did not eat her.
Just about every Sunday my granddad would commence to sharpen his axe on the whet stone (the kind that was a large stone wheel, like an upside down bicycle). After that we children would gather to watch the gore and spectacle of chickens wildly running around for a few seconds like “chickens with their heads cut off!” The pots of steaming water were prepared in advance and my grandmother, mom and aunties waited on porch to dress the birds; first by dunking them in the scalding water and then plucking them clean of feathers. We were allowed to take the guts down to the river, dumping them over the side of the dock and wait for the crawdads to emerge. I’ve never eaten a crawdad. Every wild thing was magically anthropomorphized by this then child.
I try not to eat anything that “tastes just like chicken.”
Including chicken.
But I do.
Compared to beef (and bison!), pork and fish, it’s basically junk protein… an excuse to make a good sammich on really good bread!
Younger, smaller chickens are easier to make more of.
By the way. Organically-grown chickens are tougher because they actually get exercise. I grew up on a farm that had, among other things, roughly 50-100,000 chickens at a time. The way we did it, the farmers would automate and specialize their operations; some would raise chicks to pullets for 20 weeks, another would raise egg-layers until time of slaughter, etc. They were housed in large coops and never saw the sun or breathed fresh air. Pumped full of antibiotics, beaks clipped, more. Chickens may be among the most miserably abused farm animals on the planet. Especially the caged operations. These are so horrible that my father, a pretty hardened farmer, decided after a couple years of caged operations that he would go back to raising them the old-fashioned way, where they at least could roam a floor in the huge coops — even though it cut the numbers in half.
We also raised goats, cows and horses.
I willingly pay more for animals raised and slaughtered in the most reasonably humane conditions possible. I will not eat veal (it’s animal torture, and it’s less nutritious than beef.) Whoever said that meat was supposed to be cheap.
@AbigailAdams JANUARY 29, 2020 AT 4:03 PM
I used to take my youngest (daughter) crawdad fishing. They are delicious! We had a great time and a great meal afterwards.
A fertilized egg is the ultimate small (young) chicken. Boneless and skinless too.
I know, I know. I now have to resort to biting off goose heads.
@dee ~ come after my testicles … & you ain’t seen ‘mean’ yet
… it’s just that I’m quite attached to them … just sayin’
My family stopped buying fast food chicken out of disgust.
The retail ops are trying to find the cheapest
smallest birds that can still be called a chicken
to rip us off. We consumers aren’t asking for these
tiny pieces of faux pigeons.
The thieving food joint operators are.
Where’s chicken come from?