Myths about Super Chicken

Lately, I’ve been seeing some stories about how unnaturally large and overgrown chickens are. People see how much bigger chickens are today compared to 50 years ago, and they question what farmers and poultry companies are doing to get them that way. So, I thought I would write a post addressing some of the myths about Super Chicken.

MYTH: Chickens are given steroids and/or hormones to make them so big.

First, it has been against Federal Regulations to give chickens steroids or hormones since the 1950’s. You may remember that from my previous post about food labels. In addition to being unlawful, steroid hormones don’t work well through feed or water, so farmers would have to inject the birds to get the effects of the hormones. Most chicken farmers have 50,000 birds or more. It would take a long time to give that many shots.

Poultry scientists have studied bird nutrition for many years and learned the optimal diet for raising chickens quickly and efficiently. The diets are balanced with the exact about of carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals the chickens need at their specific phase of growth. The birds have access to feed at all times, and all this attention paid to their dietary needs helps them grow fast.

MYTH: Chickens are loaded up on antibiotics to make them grow.

Most large poultry farmers raise their birds with minimal to no antibiotics in the feed and water. They have learned to control disease with sanitation and proactive feed ingredients like probiotics and essential oils. If a farmer needs give their birds antibiotics when they are sick or to help keep them from getting sick, they work with a veterinarian to determine the best medicine for their flock. Farmers predominantly use types of antibiotics that are not used in human medicine to treat sickness.

It is important to remember that, regardless of whether or not antibiotics were used in raising your chicken, there are no antibiotics in your chicken meat. All animals must go through a withdrawal time after they are given antibiotics, allowing their bodies time to metabolize the medicine and clear it from their system.

MYTH: Chickens are genetically engineered to be big and have large breasts. 

Chickens are not genetically modified or GMOs. Traditionally, farmers kept the biggest and the best hens (momma chickens) and mated them with the biggest and the best roosters (daddy chickens) and produced bigger and better chicks. Today in the poultry industry, those best-on-best mating decisions are made by scientists with pages of data about the birds. They can select new generations of chickens and emphasize any number of traits from growth and breast size to health and bone strength. Couple that with the fact that a farmer can produce a new generation of chicken in a much shorter time than a cow or a pig, and changes in the chicken industry have happened very quickly.

MYTH: Chickens are raised in cages to make them grow.

The inside of a chicken house.

Birds raised for chicken meat are kept in large open houses and allowed to roam freely. To protect the birds’ health, the houses are closed and protected from the outside environment, but the birds have lots of room to wander wherever they wish. They are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. There is food and water available all throughout the house. When you visit a chicken house, the birds are quiet and happy.

Do you have more questions about chicken myths?

There is more great info on the website, Chicken Check In. Or you can follow chicken farmers on social media.

I don’t have many chicken posts, but you can check out my post from the Moms at the Poultry Counter on white striping in chicken, or see my hormone or antibiotic posts. I also have one recipe post with chicken, Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

As always, please feel free to ask questions in the comments below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.

The Milk-fed Veal Industry

As a meat scientist I get lots of questions about all kinds of different meat, and most of the time, I feel pretty confident answering them. If I don’t know the answer, I definitely know someone who does.

…unless I was asked about veal… Veal was one topic I didn’t feel very knowledgeable about. I grew up in a rural area in the middle of the country where few people served veal at home and few restaurants offered veal on their menus. There aren’t any veal farmers to go ask or veal processing plants to go tour. Honestly, I just avoided questions about veal because I didn’t know the answers.

Travel with me, you have to take a
#meatcounterselfie

Until… I was invited by the American Veal Association to attend a tour of the American milk-fed veal industry. They brought me to farms in Indiana and Pennsylvania, feed processing plants, and veal processing plants. It was a whirlwind of 3 days of veal tours that I enjoyed with a dairy farm blogger and friend of mine, Krista Stauffer (the Farmers Wifee), a food and ag blogger and new friend, Heather Tallman (A Basil Momma), and my buddy, Donna Moenning from Look East, an ag and food marketing group.


I learned so much that there’s no way to fit it all into one blog post, so I’m going to write a series on the veal industry. Today’s post will be an overview of what veal is and some big-picture things that I learned. Then I’ll write a post going more in depth about the way the calves are cared for and what they are fed. In true Mom at the Meat Counter fashion, I’ll have a post devoted to veal slaughter and processing. Lastly, I’ll have a post about eating and cooking veal because … It. Is. Amazing!

What is veal?

Veal is meat from young calves. While beef is typically harvested at 14 to 16 months of age, veal in the US comes from calves that are younger than 6 months.

Veal is largely a byproduct of the dairy industry. Cows must have a calf to produce milk, and female calves (heifers) are kept in the herd to become the next generation of dairy cows. Most male calves are sent to the beef industry where they are grown on milk replacer, grass and grain to become beef at about 14-16 months. A smaller percentage of the male calves are used for veal production.

There are three types of veal.

1. Bob veal comes from very young calves, typically about a week old. It only makes up about 10% of the veal produced in the US. We didn’t see any bob veal on our tour. These calves go directly from the farm where they are born to harvest.

2. Milk-fed or special fed veal comes from calves that are about 5 months of age. These calves are raised on veal farms and fed a milk replacer, kinda like baby formula. They are also fed grain when they get old enough to eat it. Milk-fed veal represents about 85% of the US veal industry.

Some of the cuts available from Catelli
Brothers Veal. We visited their plant.

3. Grain-fed veal is a very small part of the industry in the US. These calves are a little older and are fed grain in addition to milk replacer. We didn’t see any grain-fed veal on our tour either.

Veal is light reddish-pink in color and has a very mild flavor so it is a favorite of chefs because it accepts flavor and seasoning very well. It is extremely tender and lean. Many of the cuts are served bone-in. Veal is very popular in French and Italian cuisine.


Americans eat less than ½ a pound of veal per person each year (compared to about 57 pounds of beef eaten per person), whereas Canadians eat over 2 pounds of veal and French-Canadians eat about 6 pounds. Each week the US harvests about 4,000 milk-fed veal calves, compared to about 600,000 animals for beef.

Two young veal calves at an Amish farm we visited.

I’m going to go into a lot more detail in upcoming posts, but I wanted to share a few of the surprising things that I learned on my tour.

• About 75% of the veal raised in the US is cared for by Amish and Mennonite families. 

• Milk-fed veal is located near the cheese producing areas of the country. The milk-replacer is made from cheese byproducts (whey) and added fats.

• Veal farmers are trained in Veal Quality Assurance programs to ensure that the calves are well cared for. Veal was the first industry to adopt a Quality Assurance program.

• Veal calves receive milk replacer for about the same amount of time that beef calves drink milk.

A farmer in Indiana is feeding the milk replacer to his calves.
They are eager for their breakfast. 

• Calves are allowed to eat grain once they are old enough. In all the farms I visited, the calves had free choice grain.

• Calves are closely monitored for anemia and other health concerns.

• Veal calves are not castrated or dehorned.

• Until they are about 8 weeks old, veal calves are raised in conditions a lot like all dairy calves. In the barns I saw, the small calves were in individual pens because they will suckle on each other and cause health problems. But, they can see and touch their neighbors.

• Once they reach 8 weeks or so, calves are housed in group environments. They may be moved to group barns with 3 or 4 calves in a pen, or simply combined in a pen with their neighbor. Group-raised veal was a policy goal of the American Veal Association and over 90% of their farms operate this way today. All of the farms represented by the AVA will use group housing by the end of this year.

• Calves are never tethered or restrained. The barns were quiet and the calves all seemed very happy. 

• Milk-fed veal calves are harvested at about 5 months and weigh about 500 pounds. 

This tour was such an eye opening experience. The veal I ate while on the tour was absolutely delicious. I am planning to buy some veal to serve to my family and will definitely order veal if I see it in a restaurant. I know that the animals are raised in good conditions and well cared for. I’m confident that the harvest and processing met my standards of humane animal treatment and food safety.

I hope to help answer some questions and concerns that people may have about veal with this series of posts. If you have a question or a comment, please leave it below.

Please know that I am tolerant of differing opinions, but I will not tolerate abusive or threatening language. All the comments are monitored by me before they post.



Here are a few more links to info about veal

American Veal Association

Catelli Brothers

Marcho Farms

Midwest Veal

Strauss Brands Veal

Veal Made Easy

Veal Quality Assurance

What Temple Grandin wants the world to know: How clean is the slaughter plant?

One of the keynote speakers at a meeting I attended last month was Dr. Temple Grandin, world renowned animal welfare expert. If you haven’t heard, Dr. Grandin's story (frankly I don’t know where you’ve been hiding). She uses her unique perspective as a person with autism to help the livestock industry better understand animal welfare. Her life story has been made into an HBO movie.

Dr. Grandin spoke for over an hour and gave us lots of advice, one piece of which was to tell more of our story in the meat industry. She said that consumers want to know basically two things about their meat:


1. How did you kill it?

2. Is it clean?

I think Dr. Grandin does a great job of addressing question 1 in the beef and pork slaughter videos she made with the American Meat Institute. I will warn you that these videos are graphic, but they are definitely worth watching if you have questions about animal welfare in slaughter plants.

Dr. Grandin encouraged us to share what we know as meat scientists about the answer to question 2. I really felt like she was talking directly to me.

The week before my meeting, I was part of a research team that collected some samples in a beef slaughter plant in Arkansas City, Kansas. (Since I posted this, the plant I visited, Creekstone Farms was featured in a story by the New York Times. Check it out and be sure to look for the pictures from inside the plant.)  As I was watching the process, I found myself in awe of the amazing number of steps that were taken on each and every animal to keep the meat clean. I have spent time in countless slaughter plants, and I have seen these steps in action. When I eat meat and when I feed it to my family, I know that the meat is safe and wholesome because I’ve seen what is done. I’ve learned about it in class. I’ve visited with the researchers who validated the steps. But, to stand and watch it all in action is awe-inspiring.

One of the most amazing facts about these slaughter facilities is how fast they operate. Some may operate as fast as 300 to 400 cattle per hour. The plant I worked in last month operated at about half that speed, but even at the slower speed, that means a new beef carcass rolls past every 24 seconds. If you watch Dr. Grandin’s videos, you can get an idea of how fast the carcasses move through the plant. Another great video to watch is from the Oprah Winfrey show. Reporter, Lisa Ling, toured a beef slaughter plant in Colorado. You can see several of the steps to transform a steer into a beef carcass and eventually, ground beef.

So, these animals are moving through the plant at pretty fast rates, and they roll on a sort of disassembly line past dozens of workers. Each of these workers has a specific job to do. The first few steps in the process have to do with humanely stunning and bleeding the animal and hanging up its carcass on the rail.

Then the disassembly begins.



Skinning a carcass
(It is hard to get permission to take
photos in a slaughter plant. These pics
are courtesy of my friends at Texas Tech
from a plant in Latin America. The process
is pretty much the same as the US.)

Removing the skin. The hide (skin) must be removed. Some plants will wash the animal’s hide to help lower the dirt and bacteria on it, but all plants have to treat the outside of skin as dirty and the meat as clean. Dirty and clean are not allowed to touch. Most of the employees involved in this process will make a few quick cuts with their knives to remove part of the skin from the carcass as it goes by, and then the carcass rolls on to the next employee. When they are cutting the skin, their knives may get dirty. After they make their cuts on each carcass, the employees will wash their gloves and dip their knives into a sterilizer bath containing 180°F water before the next carcass comes to them. That way each carcass is processed using a clean knife.

I would say that the workers spend as much time cleaning themselves and their equipment as they do actually cutting on the carcasses.



Removing the internal organs.
He is not on a moving conveyor,
but you can see how clean his
boots and aprons need to be.

Removing the internal organs. In the videos, you may have seen the workers removing the stomachs and internal organs from the carcasses. These workers are some of the most highly skilled in the plant. This is a very important job because the contents of the stomach and the intestines can be just as dirty as the outside of the hide, and one slip of the knife can result in the contents of the stomach or intestines spilling on the carcass. If that happens, all the meat with gut contents on it must be trimmed away and sent to inedible products. Because this job takes more time and skill, there are several workers doing the same job at once. They actually stand on a big conveyor belt and travel down the line with the carcasses. You may have noticed that the guts and organs are in very close contact with the workers boots and aprons. Once they are finished with a carcass, they will walk back up the line to their next carcass and in the plant I recently observed, they walked through a foot bath with 180°F water and wash their aprons, gloves and knives. So they are essentially sanitizing themselves every few seconds all day long.

All the little details. You may have noticed in the videos that large pieces of equipment are used to remove the feet and huge saws that split the carcasses. Those are also sterilized in 180°F water between carcasses. The tail is often wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it from touching the meat. The large machine that removes the hide is constantly being washed with 180°F water. Places on the carcass where the initial cuts were made are the most susceptible to contamination, so the plants have a steam vacuum machine to sterilize those areas and vacuum any possible contaminants away.

Final carcass prep. The last step in the slaughter process is a final cleaning of the entire carcass. It is actually passed through a steam tunnel or a wash cabinet to kill bacteria that may have found their way onto the carcass. Some plants spray the carcasses with an organic acid rinse to kill bacteria on the surface. Then, the carcass is moved to a very cold room (called the hot box because the carcasses are hot when they go in there) with high air velocity to chill it as fast as possible. It is actually below freezing temperature in the hot box because meat freezes at 28°F. The cold temperatures control the growth of bacteria.

Meatingplace.com has a great spotlight of Greater Omaha Packing and the steps they take to ensure the meat is as clean as possible.

Cleaning the slaughter floor. Large slaughter plants may operate as many as 16 to 18 hours per day (two 8-hour shifts). At the end of the work day, the slaughter floor is usually a pretty dirty place. That’s when the clean-up crew comes in. Each and every night, a third shift of workers will come to the plant and clean the entire place from top to bottom. Every piece of equipment, every surface, every knife, even the floors and the walls are cleaned with soap and 180°F water and sanitized. Every day. Before operations begin the next day, quality control workers will inspect and swab areas of the kill floor to ensure that the cleaning was thorough. USDA inspectors also evaluate the cleanliness of the facility prior to start up. Similar procedures are used to clean the rooms in the plant where the carcasses are cut up, too.

If you ever have the chance to visit a slaughter facility, beef, pork, or lamb, take a few minutes to notice all the steps and procedures that workers use to help to ensure that the meat is processed as safely and cleanly as possible. It is really awe-inspiring. I learn something new every time I visit a facility.
I’m sure this post has generated lots of questions, please feel free to ask. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone that does.

Pig housing: gestation stalls

What if I told you that twice a day, I tie my four-year-old to a chair and leave her there for an hour?

 

No matter how she pleads or cries or protests, she has to be tied down. Some days I strap her to a chair for 9 hours or more.

 

Before you call Child Protective Services, think about a car seat. It is against the law for me to transport my small child anywhere without strapping her into a car seat. She may not like it, but its best for her.

 

Everyone understands the dangers of not using car seats. No one will argue that they are not needed to keep our children safe. People understand how dangerous car wrecks can be. We haven’t always used them (my parents weren’t strapped in car seats), but people now agree that they are needed to keep kids safe.




Happy kid... tied to a chair



People don’t know much about pig farming. 

 

Most people think of Wilbur or Babe when they think of pigs on farms. Cute little pink pigs that make smart-alecky remarks to the sheep. But, that’s not reality. Real pigs are much different.

 

• Did you know that grown sows (momma pigs) can weigh as much as 500 pounds?
• They are huge animals. They may stand 4 feet tall.
• They can be very dangerous animals. Pig farmers can tell very scary stories about a pig hurting or even killing someone.

There has been a lot of news in social media and on the internet about gestation stalls, or maternity pens, used in the pork industry. Several food companies and restaurants have declared that they will be phased out in the next few years and some states have even passed legislation banning them.

Most people know very little about pork production and why gestation stalls are used. People see pictures and hear terrible stories about farmers ‘abusing’ pigs and think, “Wow, how can we let this happen?” The problem is that we are not hearing the whole story. So, I decided to write a post about them, to help explain.

What are gestation stalls?

Gestation stalls are small pens that farmers put sows (momma pigs) in while they are pregnant. They provide each pig with a specific amount of food and all the water she wants, but there is not a lot of room for her to move around. They can lie down, but not turn around. They are artificially inseminated (bred to the boar) in those pens and stay there until they are about to have their babies. Then they move to a different type of pen.




Photo courtesy of Standing Oaks Enterprises.



A friend of mine who is a pig farmer in Ohio sent me these pictures of pigs in gestation stalls on his farm, Standing Oaks Enterprises. You can check out his blog at Acorns for Thought.

Why do farmers use them?

First, they use them to protect the pigs from each other. Just like people, pigs pick on each other. If you have a group of pigs together in a pen, they will fight to establish a hierarchy, to determine who is the boss. In the case of sows, some will become ‘bully sows’ and will literally fight and pick on inferior sows until they are physically separated or one dies. These pigs stand waist-high and may weigh as much as 400 or even 500 pounds. A 200-lb man is no match for them. Fighting sows are very dangerous.

Second, farmers must control how much feed the pigs eat. Also like people, pregnant sows are very hungry. But, unlike most people, they don’t know to control how much they eat to keep from getting obese. If allowed to eat all they wanted, the pigs would be morbidly obese, they would shorten their lifespan, and it would be wasteful. If the sows were mixed, some sows would hog (no pun intended) all the feed and overeat, while others would starve. So keeping them separate allows the farmer to feed each pig exactly what she needs.

  




Photo courtesy of Standing Oaks Enterprises.


Another pic from Standing Oaks. You can see the pigs feed in bins above their stalls.

Since I've been working on this post, I participated in a radio show with a pig farmer from Missouri, Chris Chinn. She was asked about gestation stalls and had a couple of points I wanted to share. She said that her farm used to use group housing and that the bully sows ate too much and had big babies and trouble in labor. She also said that the weaker sows had small, unthrifty babies. When they switched to gestation stalls, they found that they used less medicine because the sows didn't injure one another fighting.

Right before the sow has her babies, the farmer will move her into a farrowing crate. These are pens that are large enough for the sow to stand up and lie down, but she has to do it slowly. Remember these sows can weigh as much as 500 pounds. Their piglets may only weigh 3 or 4 pounds. They can walk soon after they are born, but not very well. If the momma pig lies down too quickly, she could squish her babies.



This photo is from Flikr, used with permission

This is a picture of a sow with her babies in a farrowing crate. See how little they are.

Research shows that there are advantages and disadvantages of using gestation stalls. One study gave pigs the choice of remaining in a group pen or in a gestation stall and found that the pigs preferred to stay in the stalls most of the time. In a video of a farm in Indiana, the farmer has European-style gestation crates, where the pigs can choose to go in or out of the stalls. He says they stay in their stall over 90% of the time.

In response to all the pressure from food companies, some farmers have removed their gestation stalls and changed their barns to group housing. Others have installed European-style pens that give pigs a choice of where they can be.

Big changes in animal housing need to happen slowly. Don’t think that we can just ban stalls and walk away feeling good about our animal welfare practices. Pigs and people will suffer if we don’t find acceptable alternatives.


The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) put together a task force to address sow housing that included several vets and a representative from HSUS. The task force concluded that any sow housing systems had advantages and disadvantages, and that farmers and animal scientists should work together to retain the advantages of the current systems and improve on them.

I hope that veterinarians, farmers and food companies can work together to determine what is truly best for pigs. I don’t think anyone has an easy answer right now. Even the animal welfare experts say that there are no easy answers when it comes to housing pigs.

I think this quote from Dr. Temple Grandin is very meaningful, “Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be.” She said it many times. Animals are cruel to each other. Farmers do their best to keep animals happy and healthy. Just like parents with car seats.

Here are a few more resources about gestation stalls and pig housing.

· A good Q and A about gestation stalls and their history.
· A nice video about modern hog farming, including gestation stalls.
· A good video from Humane Watch about pigs and maternity pens.
· The report from the AVMA task force on sow housing.