Chickens.

The only meat I used to eat was chicken, but I haven’t eaten any chicken in over a year now, between the bird flu, the way they produce them in the factories and the things they inject into them I decided to leave chicken alone. I’m just wondering how safe are mass produced chickens as a food?, the kids love chicken and there must be hundreds of thousands of tons of them consumed every year. (chickens not kids)
As a child I remember my grandmother saying to me never eat a piece of chicken breast if you see a black spot in it, it was a cancer in the bird, anyone ever hear that one before?

Re: Chickens.

Technically, the most common bird in the world is the domestic chicken, with around 50 billion birds.

The 2013 annual total was about 870 million British birds bred, hatched, reared, and slaughtered in this country. We also imported the equivalent of (as cuts, portions, and products) another 400 million birds, the majority of which was from other European countries.

We can also estimate how many times chicken is eaten every year in the UK.
95% of the population (60.9 million people) eat chicken, and they tend to do so at least twice a week. Over the course of a year that’s 6.3 billion occasions where chicken is eaten in homes, schools, hospitals, and restaurants across the country.

Laying hens are reared for egg production. There were nearly 35 million laying hens in the UK in 2012 with 31 million eggs eaten in the UK every day. In 2012, 48.5% of eggs came from caged hens, 3.5% from hens kept in barns and 48% from free-range hens, of which 2.5% were organic.

OK, so I have thrown out a lot of figures there.

Can you imagine how catastrophic life would be should all of the chickens in the world disappeared?

Re: Chickens.

I never eat chicken just the smell of it cooking makes me feel ill.
When I cooked it for other people I would only buy organic birds and they had to be cooked with plenty of herbs to get rid of the smell.

The only black spots I know about are bruised flesh from mishandling the birds.

Re: Chickens.

A Jag owner after following a 3 legged chicken for several miles down a motorway at high speed and the chicken was getting a bit tired. So he went off the motorway and down a small lane and into a farm yard.
The jag driver did the same and skidded to a halt in front of the farmer.

Jag owner " Did you see that 3 legged chicken come into your yard?
Farmer " See it I breeds them I does"
Jag owner " I happen to be a buyer for a large supermarket chain and we have always had a problem. Where there are 3 people in a family it is hard to package 3 chicken legs that are exactly the same.
So maybe we would be interested in buying them from you! but we do have a taste test before we put on the shelves, what do they taste like"?


Farmer " I got no idea as I have not caught one yet"

Re: Chickens.

Ugh ! I'm the same

Jem - you've reminded me of Jean there, when she says to me - what are you having for yer dinner and I says beef roast
Ooo she says - I don't eat meat
When every single day, she ate 'chicken'

Re: Chickens.

I too have gone off eating so much chicken. In fact I hardly eat any animal protein at all now. You can have plenty of protein in your diet from plants. I have been eating quite a lot of fish cakes lately though come to think of it which is probably not a good thing.

Have you heard the story about the chicken that lived for 18 months with it's head cut off?

Re: Chickens.

I am eating less and less meat these days. I have the odd piece of chicken but buy just the breast pieces, put them into something to wash and take out with tongs as cannot abide touching the meat.

Mostly fish eaten in our house now, or I just eat the vegetables.

Re: Chickens.

My mother told us not to eat the black spot but for a differant reason ,,it was the lead mark of the gun shot that had killed it ..

Re: Chickens.

That's a good explanation Eliza, although I think my grandfather used to wring their necks.

Thanks for those facts Hano. Looks like a lot of people are depending on a lot of chickens then, heaven help us if they ever catch something they can pass on to humans. God forbid but maybe a new ‘Mad chicken disease’, and how would you know if a factory chicken was mad? at least with a Cow you can see the poor animal staggering and behaving very peculiar, these chickens are confined to tiny cages all their lives and look peculiar all the time.

Re: Chickens.

Can't be doin' with 'picky' eaters
I eat everything and never turn my nose up at anything edible. I eat and enjoy all of Mother Nature's bounty !