Slashdot Mirror
Fast-Growth Chickens Produce New Industry Woe: 'Spaghetti Meat' (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chicken companies spent decades breeding birds to grow rapidly and develop large breast muscles. Now the industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the consequences ranging from squishy fillets known as "spaghetti meat," because they pull apart easily, to leathery ones known as "woody breast." [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] The abnormalities pose no food safety risk, researchers and industry officials say. They are suspected side effects of genetic selection that now allows meat companies to raise a 6.3-pound bird in 47 days, roughly twice as fast as 50 years ago, according to the National Chicken Council.
That efficiency drive has helped U.S. meat giants such as Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms produce a record 42 billion pounds of chicken nuggets, tenders and other products in 2018. Now, it's adding an estimated $200 million or more in annual industry expenses to identify and divert breast fillets that are too tough, too squishy or too striped with bands of white tissue to sell in restaurants or grocery stores, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas.
That efficiency drive has helped U.S. meat giants such as Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms produce a record 42 billion pounds of chicken nuggets, tenders and other products in 2018. Now, it's adding an estimated $200 million or more in annual industry expenses to identify and divert breast fillets that are too tough, too squishy or too striped with bands of white tissue to sell in restaurants or grocery stores, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas.
That's not saying much...
Today's chicken, like most other industrially raised foods has LOST pretty much all flavor.
Hell, I don't even buy tomatoes fresh in the grocery store anymore, they're just flavorless, and often horrible texture.
I long for my summer gardens for real tomatoes...especially more heirloom 'ugly' ones that you can just sit and eat like an apple.
I've been experimenting with hydroponic growing indoors for the off season grows...good results there too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I first noticed what is now called "woody breast" about 7 years ago, but about 2 years ago it got some prevalent that I stopped eating chicken for a while. I eventually found a local farm producer that raises their chickens humanely and doesn't use the super-growing varieties. The cost is not significantly more than factory farmed chicken, it's better for the birds and the quality is night and day better. Plus, they butcher the birds to order - you can get backs and necks for stock for pennies and those birds were happily pecking away earlier that morning.
I listened to a podcast and did a little research on the subject and they're really stumped. The problem is that it's not unique to the fast-growing breeds - it occurs fairly regularly in the original stock too, so doing some cross-breeding to clear out the problem won't work. They have some new gizmo that can detect woody breast without contact (some difference in conductivity of sound?), which they're looking to bring online while they search for the genetic, environmental or husbandry basis of the condition. Right now, they have the processors feel the meat and redirect anything that feels hinky to the chicken nugget stream. (Apparently, the meat itself is fine, and the textural differences are obliterated by grinding.)
I suspect that there is some genetic component that has now become concentrated in the breed stock, because there is way more of it today than even a few years ago. Thank god for my local farmer!