Table chickens today have been redesigned from the genetics up to serve the purposes of industrial agriculture.
Chicken - Paraty, Brazil, 2012
As with genetically modified crops, chicken genetics are controlled by a few companies.
Significantly, the farmers who raise these chickens do not keep a few of the best for breeding for the next flock, as farmers had previously done.
They can’t because today’s chickens are “dead-end” birds who do not produce commercially viable offspring. Instead, farmers return, flock after flock, to the same few companies that provided the day-old chicks to them.
Read the full article by Leah Garces on the Food Safety News website.
