Slashdot Mirror
Turkeys Are Twice as Big as They Were in 1960 (theatlantic.com)
Alexis Madrigal, writing for The Atlantic: A turkey today is not the turkey of yesteryear. For decades, animal breeders have been transforming the genomes of turkeys to make them grow larger. Since 1960, the weight of turkeys has gone up about a quarter of a pound each year. The average weight of a turkey has gone from 15.1 pounds in 1960 to 31.1 pounds in 2017. And most of that change has been genetic. In one study of a representative strain of turkeys, poultry researchers fed the same diet to turkeys from 2003 and to a control group of turkeys that were representative of that strain's genetic pool from 1966. On average, the 2003 females grew to 33 pounds. Their 1966 cousins only got to 16.3 pounds.
While I can only base this on my experience, it seems that the larger the turkey the weaker the flavor seems to be. I wonder if much like fruit, the turkey has been bred only for size and the flavor has been ignored. Sure you get 30+ pounds of turkey, but it might as well be tofu for all the flavor it has. Maybe that's why they're all injected with 'flavor enhancers'. The turkeys we get from the local farmer around here are smaller (15-20 pounds on average) but they taste so much better. We did a side by side comparison one year and couldn't believe the difference. Of course you pay for that flavor, but for once a year it's well worth it.
Same thing with chicken. For a long time during my 30's I had the impression that chicken didn't taste like it used to, but I dismissed it as the 'good old days' syndrome. Then I visited a town on the savannas in Guyana and ate free-range chickens that didn't look as though they'd been cross-bred with beach balls. Wings, legs, and breasts were much smaller than I'd grown used to, but they tasted wonderful - just like I remember chicken tasting in my early years.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
How large an animal is at slaughter has little to do with how large the animal can get and more to do with how large the producer selects the animal to meet the customer demand.
I raise pigs on pasture. A full grown pig is 900 to 1,800 lbs. I do not sell my hogs at full size. Rather I raise them to a weight that fits my customers needs.
For standard whole pig family orders that is about 250 lbs live weight.
For roaster pigs it varies from as little as about 20 lbs to 300 lbs with the typical oven roaster being about 30 to 40 lbs and the typical spit roaster being about 80 lbs.
For whole market pigs that I cut to deliver to stores and restaurants the size is more like 300 to 400 lbs.
Back to turkeys, when you raise them you can harvest them at 20 lbs, 30 lbs, 40 lbs or what ever size you like to fit you or your customer's needs.
Yes, we have been doing selective breeding for millennia to improve how feed efficient animals are, muscling, etc, but the selection of size has more do do with market demand and is done simply by raising the animal and harvesting it at the desired size.
If you would like a 1,000 lb pig just let me know. Realize they cost a lot more than the standard 250 lb pigs as they take a lot longer to get to that size and thus a lot more feed too.