First it was the egg, then the chicken. This is how the riddle is solved in this story. Equalia, an organization dedicated to animal welfare, initially focused on the living conditions of laying hens on poultry farms, particularly the successful cross-breeding that was developed by geneticist Jim Warren in the 1950s to produce humans. Stop. In collaboration with other animal organizations, it has made a commitment to stop the sale of category 3 eggs from poultry farms, where, from 2025, the most important supermarket chains will have chickens born, live and die in an area of 600 square centimeters. , a leaf. New one Equalia’s campaign and another group of European organizations, this new story is about that, now focused on chicks. We are what we eat, it is sometimes said. But what are we eating?
First we have to go back to 1946 and 1947. Everyone will agree that hardly a single breath has passed in evolutionary terms since then. This is only true if we talk about natural selection. if about artificial selection, a less usual statement, everything changes. In those years, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (don’t be fooled by the name) held a competition for farmers from anywhere in the United States to cross different chicken genetic sequences. in search of a new variety that will develop disproportionately succulent thighs and breasts in record time. The world demanded protein and they were going to give it to them.
‘Chicken of Tomorrow‘. So they christened this goal, literally the chicken of tomorrow or, if you prefer, the future. The name says it all. it was a kind of poultry ‘Manhattan Project’. A $10,000 prize caught the attention of farmers of all kinds across the country eager to emulate the achievements made in 18th century England by Robert Bakewell, father of genetic variants of the Leicestershire sheep and Little White pig. pioneer of artificial selection, and above all a character whose importance is accredited for quoting him in Charles Darwin’s research on the evolution of species.
After World War II, on the brink of the “baby boom,” the need to bring cheap proteins to market was a global priority. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company sniffed the business. It seems logical and natural that the goal today is to get these proteins from chicken meat, but back then it was an anti-grain idea, because it was an expensive product, a certain gastronomic luxury. It’s worth remembering how tired Josep Pla was from eating lobster at Empordà when what he wanted was a good chicken stew.
The result of this competition is part of the history of the meat industry. Participants presented a total of 720 eggs to be incubated in equal conditions. Each egg was the result of meticulous cross selection. All chicks were fed equally. They were sacrificed after 12 weeks and dissected for study..
If a human baby were like this…
There were the first regional tournaments to show the winners. As a result, what is interesting here is that two selection lines were obtained when they crossed, giving birth to a creature programmed to grow extremely fast, called the Cornish Rock Cross. “If a human baby had grown at the same rate as those birds, two months later it would weigh 300 kilograms”Explain the Equalia spokespersons.
There is a before and an after in natural history marked by that chicken of the upcoming competition. A little over half a century later, the dominant variant on refrigerated racks is ‘broiler’ chicken, which is an impossible creature in its natural state, a creature modeled by humans and condemned to live for 41 days (usually when sacrificed). When it hatches, it weighs an average of 44 grams. He weighed over 4.2 kilos when he was killed just six weeks later.
Those who argue that the world has entered a new age that deserves to be known as the Anthropocene, that is, a planetary age in which the presence of man has changed not only the landscape but also the climate, ‘Feither’ chickens are a material on which future paleontologists will work because they are unnatural. Pre-World War II fossil ossicles would be very small compared to those that appeared suddenly in the second half of the 20th century. It will be explained in another way, as if in a prehistoric site in the layer corresponding to australopithecus, the present ‘sapiens’ suddenly appeared. It’s evolutionary nonsense, but true.
Equalia emphasizes that they are animals that suffer. they are barely standing. This animal rights organization is not demanding a vegan solution, it is content with a more ethically noble alternative. Therefore, they kept in touch with the main sales chains, the most exposed link to the public, and obtained valuable deals on this battlefield, for example with: erotica, alcampo y English Court. Chains like Carrefour still seem reluctant to sign the European Chicken Commitment, a six-point text that must be met by 2026. With matters as simple as recognizing the light of the sun.
There’s resistance, it’s true, but Dylan already said, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. El Corte Ingles, for example, decided to go faster than the commitments required. In 2017 it agreed to stop selling cage-raised eggs by 2025, but the reality is that it has extended that goal by three years and no longer has it in any of its businesses, not even in its restaurants. When it comes to chicken meat, the company ensures that 100% of its brand’s current offering comes from slow-growing breeds and is working with its suppliers to ensure that other brands sold in its stores will also be sold by 2026. By no means one of those poor descendants of the ‘Chicken of Tomorrow’ contest, or worse yet, none of those who subsequently replaced the farmers’ intuitions with the emergence of leading companies in animal genetics.
Going back. Look at the silhouettes of what a chicken was before that competition and finally what it is today. The difference is huge. It’s such a surprising fact that it looks like science fiction, Bong Joon-ho Oscar-winning directorparasites‘ made another film in 2017, perhaps a little overlooked, that tackles this topic directly. This ‘okja‘ is a tender and at the same time heartbreaking story about the determination of one company, Miranda Corporation, to develop a giant variety of consumer pig.
A highly recommended movie but (and this isn’t the first) reality transcends fiction.