From Wild Jungle Fowl To Monstrous Broiler Chickens
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Lukas Jasiunas, Faunalytics.org
March 2019

Archaeological studies reveal just how much modern broiler chickens differ from their ancestors due to selective breeding by humans.

The top broiler chicken production firm, Tyson Foods, slaughtered an astonishing 35 million chickens in an average week in 2012.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

As studies are increasingly revealing an ongoing decline in wild animal populations, human and farmed animal populations keep on rising. In fact, the combined biomass of humans and their domesticated animals now outweighs that of all wild terrestrial vertebrates. Chickens, particularly, are the world’s most numerous birds at 22.7 billion, a population growing exponentially since their estimated domestication about 8000 years ago.

Chicken meat consumption is growing faster than any other type of meat and will soon overtake pig meat, mainly due to expanding consumption in developing countries. Efficient and high-volume production is on the agenda – in the U.S., the top broiler chicken production firm, Tyson Foods, slaughtered an astonishing 35 million chickens in an average week in 2012.

In this study, a group of scientists from the U.K. and South Africa analyzed chicken remains from several different epochs to show that the domestic broiler chicken is a novel morphotype, representing the unprecedented human reconfiguration of the Earth’s biosphere.

For the entire article, please go to From Wild Jungle Fowl To Monstrous Broiler Chickens. 

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