Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. So I don't really remember exactly
Speaker 2: where I stumbled over this, but it was one of
Speaker 2: those things that got an overlapping oh really what and
Speaker 2: oh yeah? That tracks in my brain like it was
Speaker 2: a simultaneous surprised, disbelief and total lack of surprise all
Speaker 2: at the same time. And a lot of the world
Speaker 2: today chickens that are raised for their meat are just
Speaker 2: a lot different from the chickens of a century ago.
Speaker 2: They are so much bigger. That's not the surprising part.
Speaker 2: The surprising part was that a big reason for this
Speaker 2: is that in the nineteen forties, the US Department of
Speaker 2: Agriculture and the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company aka
Speaker 2: A and P Supermarkets, they teamed up to hold a
Speaker 2: contest to see who could breed the mediest, most efficient,
Speaker 2: most visually appealing chicken. So this is a story that
Speaker 2: combines the history of factory farming with the history of supermarkets,
Speaker 2: and it has had just an enormous impact on farming
Speaker 2: and on food all around.
Speaker 1: The world.
Speaker 2: Also, this is just one piece of the greater history
Speaker 2: of the industrialization of agriculture. We could have pretty similar
Speaker 2: episodes about other ways that people have influenced other animals
Speaker 2: and plants to make them more productive or easier to harvest,
Speaker 2: or generally more profitable, although those other stories might not
Speaker 2: have the A and P involved. Today's episode, though, is
Speaker 2: about raising chickens as food for people, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the general patterns that we're talking about are really
Speaker 2: not unique to chickens. So if you're thinking, why aren't
Speaker 2: they talking about cows because this episode is about the
Speaker 2: chicken episode, Yeah, So we're gonna start with some background
Speaker 2: on chickens and chicken breeding. Today's chickens were first domesticated
Speaker 2: from red jungle fowl or Gallus gallas, which is a
Speaker 2: tropical bird native to Southeast Asia. Based on research we
Speaker 2: talked about in one of our Unearthed episodes last year,
Speaker 2: this probably happened in what's now central Thailand sometime between
Speaker 2: sixteen fifty and twelve fifty BCE, but other research has
Speaker 2: suggested other parts of Asia as well, and in some
Speaker 2: cases on an earlier timeline. The domestic chicken or Gallus
Speaker 2: gallus domesticus was then introduced to the rest of Asia, Europe,
Speaker 2: and Africa, reaching a lot of the eastern hemisphere by
Speaker 2: about eight hundred BCE. Chickens were also carried from the
Speaker 2: Indian subcontinent to islands in the Pacific, and from there
Speaker 2: to the Americas. Chickens were introduced into what's now Chile
Speaker 2: at least a century before Columbus's first voyage to the
Speaker 2: Americas in fourteen ninety two. Colonists and slave traders also
Speaker 2: introduced chickens from Europe and Africa into North America starting
Speaker 2: around the seventeenth century, so chickens were introduced to the
Speaker 2: Americas from both the East and the west. Europeans brought
Speaker 2: domestic chickens to New Zealand in seventeen seventy three and
Speaker 2: to Australia in seventeen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: In a lot of places, but certainly not everywhere, Archaeological
Speaker 1: evidence suggests that for centuries chickens were mostly associated with
Speaker 1: the wealthiest, most elite people, and in Europe, the oldest
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence of domesticated chickens suggests they were not being
Speaker 1: eaten as food. Their skeletons are intact and there are
Speaker 1: not any cut or bite marks on those bones. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: people in Europe and in Europe's colonies in the Americas
Speaker 1: did start to eat chickens. For the most part, though
Speaker 1: the chickens were not being raised for that purpose. They
Speaker 1: were being raised for their eggs, so hens would be
Speaker 1: killed and eaten after their egg production slowed down or stopped,
Speaker 1: or maybe if they never started laying in the first place.
Speaker 1: The meat from older hens tended to be tough, so
Speaker 1: their meat was typically stewed or otherwise slow cooked in
Speaker 1: some way to make it more tender. The other major
Speaker 1: source of meat was male chickens or cockrels that would
Speaker 1: be culled out of the flock before they were old
Speaker 1: enough to start fertilizing the hens eggs, and then they
Speaker 1: would be fattened.
Speaker 2: Up for slaughter.
Speaker 1: In a lot of places, all of this was considered
Speaker 1: women's work, sometimes with the help of their children. Women
Speaker 1: raised the chickens, gathered the eggs, and slaughtered, dressed, and
Speaker 1: cooked them. They often earned money for their households by
Speaker 1: selling extra eggs or selling the chickens that were being slaughtered.
Speaker 1: Prior to the US Civil War, chickens were also often
Speaker 1: the only livestock that enslaved people were allowed to raise
Speaker 1: for themselves, so enslaved people would raise chickens for food.
Speaker 1: In some cases they were able to sell the eggs
Speaker 1: or the meat to their enslavers or to other people
Speaker 1: in the area to earn their own money. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 1: chicken just wasn't an everyday food for most people. Before
Speaker 1: the development of reliable refrigeration and freezing technology, cockrels were
Speaker 1: usually a seasonal food after they were culled from the
Speaker 1: flock in late spring. Chicken meat was also generally a
Speaker 1: lot more expensive than it is today. There were fewer
Speaker 1: chickens being sold, and the chickens themselves were a lot smaller,
Speaker 1: so to many consumers, chicken was not an everyday staple.
Speaker 1: It was for special occasions or Sunday dinners, or was
Speaker 1: maybe even a luxury that was usually out of reach.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the nineteenth century, people in Europe
Speaker 2: and North America started developing new breeds of domestic chicken.
Speaker 2: That's built on the work of Robert Bakewell, who lived
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth century during the British Agricultural Revolution. We
Speaker 2: talked about this period and episode on Jethro Tull and
Speaker 2: the Seed Drill, which came out in December of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. This was a period of massive change in
Speaker 2: virtually every aspect of British agriculture, including land use, animal husbandry,
Speaker 2: methods for preparing and using the soil for crops, and
Speaker 2: the development of new agricultural machines. Bakewell's work was specifically
Speaker 2: in livestock breeding. In a lot of ways, Bakewell was
Speaker 2: building on what was already known for millennia. People have
Speaker 2: understood that living beings can inherit various traits from their ancestors,
Speaker 2: although the start of genetics as a modern science was
Speaker 2: still decades away when Bakewell was living, and breeds of
Speaker 2: animals already existed all over the world, adapted to things
Speaker 2: like the environment they were living in, the food they
Speaker 2: had to eat, and what.
Speaker 1: People wanted them to do. People have also been selectively
Speaker 1: breeding animals, at least to some extent, for kind of
Speaker 1: as long as we've been domesticating them. But Well was
Speaker 1: particularly careful and methodical about what he was doing, and
Speaker 1: he established practices that became really influential.
Speaker 2: For example, he set specific goals for the traits that
Speaker 2: he wanted to focus on and what he wanted to
Speaker 2: achieve with those traits. He separated his herds and flocks
Speaker 2: according to the animal's sex, allowing only specifically chosen animals
Speaker 2: to breed with one another. He chose animals that had
Speaker 2: the traits that he wanted to encourage, and then he
Speaker 2: encouraged those same traits even more through inbreeding. He called
Speaker 2: this breeding in and in. He also culled animals that
Speaker 2: had undesirable traits out of his herds and flocks, and
Speaker 2: he helped popularize the practice of using male animals with
Speaker 2: particularly desirable traits for stud This not only encouraged those
Speaker 2: same traits among other farmers animals, but it also demonstrated
Speaker 2: whether Bakewell had successfully bred an animal that could pass
Speaker 2: those traits on. This carefully managed breeding had a big
Speaker 2: impact on the animals bake Well worked with. In particular,
Speaker 2: he developed or improved on breeds of cattle so that
Speaker 2: they would be well suited for work while also providing
Speaker 2: good meat, rather than primarily being working animals with meat
Speaker 2: as an afterthought. He similarly developed sheep for both their
Speaker 2: meat and their wool, rather than primarily wool production. His
Speaker 2: two biggest successes were probably in his breed improvements to
Speaker 2: Leicestershire longhorn cattle and Leicester sheep, but there were also downsides.
Speaker 2: It's possible that his use and promotion of inbreeding contributed
Speaker 2: to health problems among the animals, including making some breeds
Speaker 2: of sheep more susceptible to the prion disease known as scrapie.
Speaker 2: To return to chickens, in the nineteenth century, people in
Speaker 2: Europe and North America started using these same basic ideas
Speaker 2: to develop new breeds of rabbits and chickens and to
Speaker 2: enhances existing breeds. By the eighteen fifties, breeding animals and
Speaker 2: plants to enhance their beauty or their uniqueness was known
Speaker 2: as fancying. In addition to breeding rabbits and chickens, fanciers
Speaker 2: started establishing official standards for the various breeds, something that
Speaker 2: would later be done for pigeons, dogs, cats, and other animals.
Speaker 1: And now you know why magazines are called things like
Speaker 1: cat fancy.
Speaker 2: I always thought that it just meant fancy. Yes, I
Speaker 2: did not realize there was a thread that was about
Speaker 2: making them more distinctive and beautiful.
Speaker 1: This early interest in chicken fancying contributed to a more
Speaker 1: robust understanding of inheritance and breeding among chicken farmers than
Speaker 1: among farmers who worked with a lot of other animals.
Speaker 1: That's not to suggest that other farmers were clueless, just
Speaker 1: as a general rule, chicken breeding was a little bit
Speaker 1: farther along in the early twentieth century. There was also
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap among fanciers, breeders, and geneticists. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the late nineteen teens that animal breeding and
Speaker 1: genetics started to be seen as two different but intersecting fields.
Speaker 2: All this together means that when a contest was proposed
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forties to see which breeder could produce
Speaker 2: the best broiler chicken, chicken farmers were really ready for it,
Speaker 2: and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2: In the first decades of the twentieth century, a couple
Speaker 2: of innovations really affected the way US chicken farmers could
Speaker 2: develop their flocks. The first was the decision of US
Speaker 2: Postmaster General as Burlison to allow live chicks to be
Speaker 2: sent through the mail. That decision was made in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: so as chicks are hatching, they consumed the last of
Speaker 2: yoke from inside of their eggs. And that provides them
Speaker 2: with nourishment for about the first forty eight to seventy
Speaker 2: two hours of their life. That allows chicks who are
Speaker 2: being cared for by their mothers to survive for a
Speaker 2: couple of days until all of their siblings have hatched
Speaker 2: and she's able to leave the nest. It also allows
Speaker 2: chicks to survive a couple of days in the mail
Speaker 2: in a specially designed box that's made to physically protect
Speaker 2: them while also making sure they have good airflow and
Speaker 2: are at the right temperature in transit. The other development
Speaker 2: was the first electrically heated egg incubator, which debuted in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three. This was not the first egg incubator
Speaker 2: by any stretch. There is evidence of incubators in both
Speaker 2: Egypt and China as far back as four thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: These were buildings heated with fires, which required someone to
Speaker 2: be on hand around the clock to keep the temperature
Speaker 2: steady and to tend to the eggs. By the late
Speaker 2: nineteenth and early twentieth century, the incubators had been developed
Speaker 2: that incorporated thermostats so a person didn't have to monitor
Speaker 2: the temperature quite so closely.
Speaker 1: Some of these were like small cabinets heated with hot water,
Speaker 1: and others were whole rooms or even buildings, but electric
Speaker 1: models were easier to manage as long as the person
Speaker 1: had access to a reliable electricity source.
Speaker 2: This meant that farmers who wanted to add new chickens
Speaker 2: to their flocks could buy chicks and have those chicks
Speaker 2: sent to them through the mail rather than losing their
Speaker 2: laying hens for about three weeks while they incubated their
Speaker 2: own eggs, and people who sold the chicks could do
Speaker 2: the same. They could produce more chicks than they would
Speaker 2: be if the hens were incubating them, because the hens
Speaker 2: eventually stopped laying new eggs to sit on them until
Speaker 2: they hatch. At about the same time that all this
Speaker 2: was happening, refrigeration was also making it possible for people
Speaker 2: to ship eggs and meat over greater distances and to
Speaker 2: store them for longer in their homes. The first refrigerated
Speaker 2: cars were developed in the late nineteenth century and used
Speaker 2: ice tanks and insulation to keep their contents cool. People
Speaker 2: were also using ice boxes to keep foods cool in
Speaker 2: their homes in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Although that required a steady supply of large blocks of
Speaker 1: ice The first mechanical refrigerator for home use in the
Speaker 1: US debuted in nineteen thirteen. The first mechanically cooled trucks
Speaker 1: were developed in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various people
Speaker 2: in the United States started trying to raise chickens specifically
Speaker 2: for their meat rather than for their eggs. But the
Speaker 2: first person to be really successful at it was the
Speaker 2: Seal Steel of Ocean Viewed, Delaware. This is on the
Speaker 2: del Marva Peninsula that's east of Washington, d c. And Baltimore,
Speaker 2: and the peninsula includes parts of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.
Speaker 2: That's where its name comes from. In nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 2: Steel ordered fifty chicks to supplement her flock of laying hens,
Speaker 2: and somewhere in that process, an extra zero got added
Speaker 2: to her order, and she wound up with five hundred
Speaker 2: of them. She and her husband, Wilmer, decided to make
Speaker 2: the best of this situation and built sheds to house
Speaker 2: these extra chicks in. Once they were grown, weighing about
Speaker 2: two and a half pounds apiece, she was able to
Speaker 2: sell them for sixty seven cents a pound.
Speaker 1: The next year, Steel ordered more chickens on purpose, this
Speaker 1: time one thousand of them. Eventually, her broiler business became
Speaker 1: so large and successful that her husband left his job
Speaker 1: at the Coast Guard to help her with it. By
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, they were raising ten thousand birds a year.
Speaker 1: Their business was so successful that they eventually bought a yacht,
Speaker 1: although they were killed in an explosion aboard that yacht
Speaker 1: on October seventh, nineteen forty.
Speaker 2: Cecil Steel's first accidental chick order is often cited as
Speaker 2: the start of the Delmarva Peninsula's poultry industry, and in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, one of her original broiler houses was
Speaker 2: listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Delmarva
Speaker 2: Peninsula also became a major source of chicken meat for
Speaker 2: Jewish communities and cities in the northeastern United States, particularly
Speaker 2: New York. Chicken meat was more popular among Jewish people
Speaker 2: than among many other groups because of Jewish dietary laws.
Speaker 2: At first, most of the chickens that were raised in
Speaker 2: the area were transported to New York, where they would
Speaker 2: be processed according to Jewish law. Kosher processing plants started
Speaker 2: to be built on the peninsula in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Other discoveries were being made around these same years as well.
Speaker 2: A big one involved improvements to chicken feed, especially the
Speaker 2: nutrient content of that feed. People had started figuring out
Speaker 2: that specific foods seemed to prevent or treat specific diseases
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth century, but the first vitamins weren't isolated
Speaker 2: until the early twentieth century. More nutritious feed wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: about a better happier life for the chickens, though. Farmers
Speaker 2: had figured out that chickens grew much faster if they
Speaker 2: were confined indoors rather than being outdoors. Being indoors also
Speaker 2: helped protect them from predators. Outdoor chickens usually stop laying
Speaker 2: in the winter, but keeping them indoors with controlled heating
Speaker 2: and artificial light also meant that they could provide more
Speaker 2: consistent egg supply year round. But without exposure to natural sunlight,
Speaker 2: confined chickens developed leg weakness and other physical issues because
Speaker 2: their bodies couldn't produce enough vitamin D. Vitamin D was
Speaker 2: first discovered in the nineteen twenties, and by the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties farmers were adding cod liver oil, which is rich
Speaker 2: in vitamin D into their feed, making it more possible
Speaker 2: to confine them indoors. Of course, being confined indoors also
Speaker 2: allowed diseases to spread through flocks very rapidly. In the
Speaker 2: early twentieth century, a major threat was best Sillery white
Speaker 2: diarrhea caused by Salmonilla polorum bacteria. People started looking for
Speaker 2: ways to prevent illnesses among chickens while still keeping them confined.
Speaker 2: For example, one of the businesses Cceal and Wilmer Steel
Speaker 2: moved into toward the end of their lives involved providing
Speaker 2: vaccines for chickens. By nineteen thirty five, the US Department
Speaker 2: of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal Industry had launched the National
Speaker 2: Poultry Improvement Plan to try to improve sanitation and reduce
Speaker 2: disease at chicken farms, test birds for illnesses, and encourage
Speaker 2: consistency and uniformity among the flocks. Diseases continue to be
Speaker 2: an issue in the poultry industry, though, for example, other
Speaker 2: species of Salmonilla bacteria are a major source of food
Speaker 2: borne illness from both chicken and eggs. In the United States.
Speaker 2: Pick In rose in popularity during World War II as
Speaker 2: a food source because it wasn't being subject to rationing
Speaker 2: in the way most other meats were. People who had
Speaker 2: the space were also encouraged to keep backyard flocks for
Speaker 2: both eggs and meat. That was something that had been
Speaker 2: encouraged during World War One as well. Although rationing ended
Speaker 2: in the United States for everything but sugar by the
Speaker 2: end of nineteen forty five, there were still shortages of
Speaker 2: a lot of meats after the war, as the United
Speaker 2: States provided food aid to other countries. So chicken meat
Speaker 2: continued to be in high demand, and that's what ultimately
Speaker 2: led to an effort to basically redesign the chicken, moving
Speaker 2: away from birds that were bred primarily for their egg
Speaker 2: production and toured ones that grew quickly with lots of
Speaker 2: meat on their breast, legs, and thighs. It would be
Speaker 2: the chicken of tomorrow, and it would cost less per
Speaker 2: pound than red meat did. The Chicken of Tomorrow contest
Speaker 2: was a partnership, as we said earlier, between the USDA
Speaker 2: and ANP grocery stores, and it had multiple overlapping objectives.
Speaker 2: One was to provide consumers with a cheaper, more readily
Speaker 2: available source of meat. Another was to make chicken raising
Speaker 2: more productive and more profitable at every step of the process,
Speaker 2: including for A ANDP grocery stores, and for AMP it.
Speaker 1: Was also a pr move. As we said at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, AMP stood for Atlantic and Pacific,
Speaker 1: as in the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. As
Speaker 1: that name suggests. It had originally focused on tea and
Speaker 1: then coffee, initially by mail order. The company had started
Speaker 1: moving into the grocery business as rising tariffs made coffee
Speaker 1: and tea less profitable. The first store was a small
Speaker 1: shop with limited hours, one employee, not a lot of overhead,
Speaker 1: so they were able to sell groceries for cheap. Soon
Speaker 1: they expanded, both in terms of the number of stores
Speaker 1: and the sizes and offerings of those stores. In the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, most grocery stores in the United States
Speaker 1: were small. They had a limited selection of mostly canned goods,
Speaker 1: dry goods, and some produce that had a long shelf life,
Speaker 1: so things like potatoes and onions. People bought milk from
Speaker 1: the dairy and beef from the butcher, and bread from
Speaker 1: the baker and so on. All of these tended to
Speaker 1: be small, locally owned businesses. But A and P started
Speaker 1: putting all these different types of foods under one roof,
Speaker 1: in other words, a supermarket. A and P also started
Speaker 1: trying to control as much of their products supply as possible,
Speaker 1: buying bakeries and canneries and meat packers and wholesalers. They
Speaker 1: cut out various middlemen and sold food at cheaper prices
Speaker 1: while still turning a profit, and they opened thousands of
Speaker 1: new locations over the nineteen twenties and thirties. Soon and
Speaker 1: PA was facing allegations that it was unfairly running mom
Speaker 1: and pop stores out of business. In the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: New York Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, along with
Speaker 1: eleven of its subsidiaries and sixteen officers and directors, faced
Speaker 1: charges for quote, conspiracy to unreasonably restrain and monopolize interstate
Speaker 1: trade and commerce in food and food products and that
Speaker 1: violated the Sherman Anti Trust Act. All but three of
Speaker 1: the defendants were found guilty. The total fine was one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, but adjusted for inflation,
Speaker 1: that is very approximately three million dollars. That wasn't enough
Speaker 1: of a punishment for A ANDP to really change its
Speaker 1: business practices, but it was enough of a hit to
Speaker 1: the company's reputation that they were looking for ways to
Speaker 1: improve their image. Of course, this contest would not only
Speaker 1: benefit A and P being able to raise bigger chickens
Speaker 1: and do it aster would also benefit chicken farmers and
Speaker 1: others in the industry. So the Chicken of Tomorrow contest
Speaker 1: had broad industrial support. There were national organizers on board.
Speaker 2: In forty four of the then forty eight states, and
Speaker 2: people and organizations that were participating in some way included scientists, researchers,
Speaker 2: and land grant colleges. The USDA's Cooperative Extension Service worked
Speaker 2: with the land grant colleges to provide education and resources
Speaker 2: for farmers that wanted to move into broiler raising or
Speaker 2: to add broiler chickens to their existing farms. Each state
Speaker 2: where there seemed to be enough interest had its own
Speaker 2: Chicken of Tomorrow chairmen, who selected a Chicken of Tomorrow
Speaker 2: Committee to run state level contests in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty seven. There were also regional contests in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven, and then the national finals were held
Speaker 2: at the University of Delaware's Agricultural Experiment Station in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight. Some states continued to hold contests after the
Speaker 2: national contest was over, and organizations like the four H
Speaker 2: Club held similar contests for young people to encourage them
Speaker 2: and their parents to start raising broilers. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: some contests specifics after a sponsor break. In describing the
Speaker 2: Chicken of Tomorrow contest, Howard C. Pierce, poultry research director
Speaker 2: at A and P, said he wanted to quote squelch
Speaker 2: that dream of two chickens in every pot by providing
Speaker 2: one bird chunky enough for the whole family, a chicken
Speaker 2: with breast meat so thick you can carve it into
Speaker 2: steaks with drumsticks that contain a minimum of bone buried
Speaker 2: in layers of juicy dark meat, all costing less instead
Speaker 2: of more. That chicken in every pot is a reference
Speaker 2: to a Republican Party campaign ad that had run in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight, which is widely attributed to then presidential
Speaker 2: candidate Herbert Hoover. Although this ad did end with vote
Speaker 2: for Hoover, Hoover did not actually say this or place
Speaker 2: the ad. At the state level, contestants sent either one
Speaker 2: hundred straight run chicks, meaning chicks as they had been
Speaker 2: hatched without being examined to determine their sex, or fifty cockrolls.
Speaker 2: These chicks were given wing bands to identify them, and
Speaker 2: they were raised for twelve weeks. Fifteen males from each
Speaker 2: batch were slaughtered and dressed, and the twelve best of
Speaker 2: those were judged. Regional contests followed, and then in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, forty finalists and six backups submitted seven hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty eggs each for the final round. The finalists
Speaker 2: included farms and breeders from twenty five different states. The
Speaker 2: eggs were delivered in a very carefully controlled procession. They
Speaker 2: arrived in Delaware at set times so that they could
Speaker 2: be loaded into incubators without interruption. While the eggs were incubating,
Speaker 2: each set was assigned a number so that the breeders
Speaker 2: would remain anonymous during judging. Once the eggs hatched, four
Speaker 2: hundred birds from each contestant, plus ten as a backup,
Speaker 2: were taken to specially built barns and raised for twelve weeks.
Speaker 2: All of the birds were kept on the same diet,
Speaker 2: with everything about their care and environment being very tightly controlled.
Speaker 2: After twelve weeks, they were slaughtered and New York dressed,
Speaker 2: meaning their feathers were plucked, but otherwise their bodies and
Speaker 2: organs were left intact. Every sixth bird from the dressing
Speaker 2: line was collected for judging, for a total of fifty
Speaker 2: birds per contestant. These birds were judged according to two
Speaker 2: sets of criteria, economy of production and carcass characteristics. For
Speaker 2: economy of production, judges evaluated the egg production rate of
Speaker 2: the parent flock, the percent of all the eggs that
Speaker 2: were successfully hatched, the number of chicks who survived until
Speaker 2: the age of twelve weeks, their weight at the age
Speaker 2: of twelve weeks, how quickly they grew their feathers and
Speaker 2: how uniform those feathers were, and the uniformity of the
Speaker 2: size and color of all the birds in the flock.
Speaker 2: Although this contest was focused on producing birds that would
Speaker 2: have a lot of meat, egg production was still an
Speaker 2: important factor. Out of one hundred total points in economy
Speaker 2: of production, up to twenty five could come from the
Speaker 2: egg production for the parent flock. Each of the standards
Speaker 2: we just mentioned was worth fewer points, with the uniformity
Speaker 2: of the type and color of the flock earning up
Speaker 2: to five points. For carcass characteristics, the birds were judged
Speaker 2: on several factors affecting how much meat they would yield,
Speaker 2: including how well proportioned the body was, the size and
Speaker 2: shape of the breast, the shape of the keel bone,
Speaker 2: which is a breastbone that needed to be well covered
Speaker 2: with meat, straight and parallel with the back. Judges also
Speaker 2: looked at how plump and meaty the chickens thigh joints, drumsticks,
Speaker 2: and backs were.
Speaker 1: From there, they looked at the condition of the bird's
Speaker 1: skin and pin feathers. Their skin needed to be bright, soft, pliable,
Speaker 1: smooth and uniformly colored, and they needed to be free
Speaker 1: from unsightly pin feathers, particularly dark ones. As with the
Speaker 1: economy of production, judging these traits could earn one hundred
Speaker 1: total points, eighty for the factors affecting the bird's edible
Speaker 1: meat yield, and twenty for the condition of the skin
Speaker 1: and pin feathers. The del Marva Chicken of Tomorrow Festival
Speaker 1: was held in Georgetown, Delaware, as a finale to this
Speaker 1: whole contest, and winners were announced on June twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. The runner up was Henry Saliot of
Speaker 1: Arbor Acres Farm and glass and Bury, Connecticut. He was
Speaker 1: the son of Italian immigrants, and he'd left school in
Speaker 1: the eighth grade, and an article that was written after
Speaker 1: his death, a relative attributed this to Salio having dyslexia.
Speaker 1: When he was still a teenager, he had started raising
Speaker 1: chickens on his parents' farm. In nineteen thirty seven, a
Speaker 1: meat processor asked if Salio could breed chickens with all
Speaker 1: white feathers, because the feathers of Plymouth rock chickens being
Speaker 1: raised caused staining during kosher processing. Salio did this, naming
Speaker 1: the breed he developed Arbor Acre's white Plymouth Rock. That
Speaker 1: was the breed he entered into the Chicken of Tomorrow contest,
Speaker 1: where those all white feathers were seen as a big plus.
Speaker 1: A lot of brief write ups about the Chicken of
Speaker 1: Tomorrow contest describe Henry Salio as a teenager. And while
Speaker 1: he did start breeding chickens as a teen and he
Speaker 1: was still in his twenties when he developed this breed,
Speaker 1: he was thirty seven when the contest took place. The
Speaker 1: overall was submitted by Charles and Kenneth Vantras of Vantras
Speaker 1: Hatchery and Marysville, California. These birds were across between red
Speaker 1: cornish chickens and New Hampshire reds, and this was fairly
Speaker 1: unusual for the time. The vast majority of the contestants
Speaker 1: submitted pure bread chickens rather than cross breeds or hybrids.
Speaker 1: The overall perception was that pure bread chickens were most
Speaker 1: likely to retain the characteristics that they had been bred for,
Speaker 1: and that crosses might not breed true or produce the
Speaker 1: expected and desired characteristics in the next generation of young
Speaker 1: But Vantras had developed a hybrid that was better at
Speaker 1: converting feed into meat and produced more meat than any
Speaker 1: of the other contestants. Most broiler chickens of the area
Speaker 1: produced about two and a half pounds of meat, but
Speaker 1: the Vantresses chickens grew to four pounds on twelve pounds
Speaker 1: of feed. After the contest, both Henry Salio and the
Speaker 1: Vantris brothers and their chickens became an enormous part of
Speaker 1: the poultry industry in the United States. Vantris's stock was
Speaker 1: eventually crossed with Salio's. Salio became a major industrial chicken supplier,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty four arbor Acres was bought by
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller's International Basic Economy Corporation IBEC. Which launched arbor
Speaker 1: Acres into an international brand. Today it's part of Aviagen
Speaker 1: Broiler Breeders. Salio also became a director at Purdue Farms
Speaker 1: and was a lifetime director of the National Broiler Council,
Speaker 1: which later became the National Chicken Council. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, he started Pureline Genetics to breed chickens without
Speaker 1: the use of antibiotics. In the nineteen fifties, it had
Speaker 1: been discovered that chickens grew bigger and faster when given antibiotics,
Speaker 1: although of course that later led to concerns about antibiotic
Speaker 1: resistant bacteria. Salio died in two thousand and three at
Speaker 1: the age of ninety two.
Speaker 2: Vantress Farms also became a major international broiler chicken supplier,
Speaker 2: and today Vantress Farms as cob Vantress owned by Tyson Foods,
Speaker 2: and both cob Bantriss and Viagin provide breeding stock for
Speaker 2: broiler farms all over the world. I've found varying estimates,
Speaker 2: but at least sixty percent of the broiler chickens living
Speaker 2: today all over the world come from one of these
Speaker 2: two companies, maybe even more. Most of the other contestants
Speaker 2: in the contest did not fare nearly as well. About
Speaker 2: half of them went out of business in the years
Speaker 2: after the contest as arbor Acres and Vantriss Farms started
Speaker 2: to dominate the broiler industry, and that is in spite
Speaker 2: of massive growth in the US chicken industry. The number
Speaker 2: of chickens raised in the United States increased from two
Speaker 2: hundred seventy five million in nineteen forty six to six
Speaker 2: hundred and sixteen million just four years later. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons that arbor Acres and Vantriss Farms became the
Speaker 2: source of so many of the world's broiler chickens wasn't
Speaker 2: just because of the traits of those chickens. It was
Speaker 2: because of their use of hybrid breeds. Although arbor Acres
Speaker 2: had won an honorable mention with a breed that had
Speaker 2: been developed by Henry Salliot, by nineteen fifty nine it
Speaker 2: had begun breeding hybrids as well. Because of the combinations
Speaker 2: of dominant and recessive genes that were involved in giving
Speaker 2: these birds their desired traits, their breeding had to be
Speaker 2: really carefully managed by people who knew which birds should
Speaker 2: be allowed to reproduce with each other. Farmers could not
Speaker 2: simply breed the chickens that they bought from one of
Speaker 2: these companies with each other or with their existing flocks
Speaker 2: and expect to get the same results. So farmers had
Speaker 2: to keep going back to the supplier to buy new
Speaker 2: chicks every year. Was a little bit like copy protection,
Speaker 2: except for birds.
Speaker 1: This also meant that, at least in terms of commercial
Speaker 1: chicken farming, the various breeds that farmers had previously worked
Speaker 1: with were soon replaced by standardized, uniform hybrids. Those other
Speaker 1: breeds haven't entirely gone away. Many still exist on small farms,
Speaker 1: and in recent years in the US there has been
Speaker 1: a surge in people raising flocks in their backyards as
Speaker 1: a hobby. In some parts of the world, these commercial
Speaker 1: hybrid chickens also haven't become quite as ubiquitous as in
Speaker 1: the United States, or they took much longer to get
Speaker 1: a foothold. But there is way less genetic diversity in
Speaker 1: the broiler industry today than there was on chicken farms
Speaker 1: one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Ago, and many of those same traits that make these
Speaker 2: chickens so much more profitable and efficient in terms of
Speaker 2: things like how much feed it takes to raise them,
Speaker 2: those are just not good for the chickens themselves. Today's
Speaker 2: commercial broiler chickens really could not survive and most environments
Speaker 2: outside of chicken farms. Their size and their weight makes
Speaker 2: them prone to leg, joint and heart problems, and their
Speaker 2: really fast growth rate can lead to metabolic disorders.
Speaker 1: That's in addition to the effects of the conditions in
Speaker 1: which many of these birds are kept. Although there has
Speaker 1: been a push in recent years for birds to be
Speaker 1: raised more humanely with adequate indoor space and access to
Speaker 1: the outdoors, that isn't the case on every farm. Illnesses
Speaker 1: continue to be a major thread at many farms, including
Speaker 1: things like salmonila that we referenced earlier and avian flu,
Speaker 1: which has led to the culling of millions and millions
Speaker 1: of chickens as well as other birds in an attempt
Speaker 1: to control the spread.
Speaker 2: These changes to the poultry industry that followed this contest
Speaker 2: have also contributed to it becoming a lot more vertically integrated.
Speaker 2: So rather than separate businesses breeding chickens and providing eggs
Speaker 2: to hatcheries and raising the chicks and slaughtering the grown
Speaker 2: chickens and then preparing and packaging the meat, poultry producers
Speaker 2: have started controlling that whole process ends to end as
Speaker 2: one company, and.
Speaker 1: Chickens have continued to get much bigger. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: a team from the University of Alberta published a study
Speaker 1: comparing chickens from nineteen fifty seven, nineteen seventy eight and
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, using strains that have been maintained
Speaker 1: at the University of Alberta Poultry Research Center and at
Speaker 1: the Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario, and feeding and raising
Speaker 1: all the chickens in the same way. On average, the
Speaker 1: two thousand and five chickens were about four times heavier
Speaker 1: than the nineteen fifty seven chickens. The two thousand and
Speaker 1: five strain was also about three times more efficient at
Speaker 1: converting feed into meat.
Speaker 2: Although the Chicken of Tomorrow contest was hugely influential in
Speaker 2: all of this sort of starting the chicken industry on
Speaker 2: this path, we should also note that this did not
Speaker 2: happen in isolation. The USDA Extension Service heavily promoted broiler
Speaker 2: raising to farmers as a profitable business and promoted chicken
Speaker 2: to housewives as an inexpensive source of meat for their families,
Speaker 2: especially among communities that weren't already eating more chicken than average.
Speaker 2: Government nutrition standards encouraged chicken as a healthy food. Chicken
Speaker 2: producers also started selling chicken meat that was ready to
Speaker 2: be cooked and eaten, rather than selling New York dressed
Speaker 2: birds which still had their heads and feet and internal
Speaker 2: organs in place. This eventually progressed to selling specific cuts
Speaker 2: of meat together, packaged in tray packs. In more recent years,
Speaker 2: some people have turned to chicken as a source of
Speaker 2: meat based protein that has less of an environmental impact
Speaker 2: than beef does, particularly in terms of things like greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas emissions. So all of that has contributed to chicken
Speaker 2: moving to be a more ubiquitous part of a lot
Speaker 2: of people's diets, rather than just thinking of it as
Speaker 2: something for special occasions like it was one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: The USDA is obviously still around, but the A and
Speaker 1: P grocery store chain closed down in twenty fifteen after
Speaker 1: filing for bankruptcy protection twice over the course of five years.
Speaker 1: So that's the Chicken of Tomorrow there.
Speaker 2: I saw a couple of things from more recent years
Speaker 2: as I was working on this, where the name Chicken
Speaker 2: of Tomorrow has been adopted to sort of talk about
Speaker 2: the next phase in chicken production in some cases with
Speaker 2: that being more focused on like the welfare of the
Speaker 2: animals and the environmental impact of because even like, even
Speaker 2: if you take into consideration that in general, raising chickens
Speaker 2: produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than raising beef, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of poop. There's so much poop. That poop contains
Speaker 2: a lot of ammonia. Like they're there's other things to
Speaker 2: look at as well.
Speaker 1: While we talk about the Chicken of tomorrow? Do you
Speaker 1: have the listener mail of today?
Speaker 2: I do. It is from Kay. They wrote, Hey, Racy
Speaker 2: and Holly. As I was listening to the Mary Dire episode,
Speaker 2: her name rang an increasingly loud bell. After checking my
Speaker 2: camera roll, I realized it's because there's a statue of
Speaker 2: her at my alma mater, Earlham College, home of the
Speaker 2: fighting Quakers. No one ever knows about Arlam, so it
Speaker 2: was very exciting to realize this personal connection. Just as
Speaker 2: I made the connection, you mentioned that the statue is
Speaker 2: a casting of the one outside the State House. I've
Speaker 2: attached to a photo I took on my most recent campus visit.
Speaker 2: I thought you might enjoy knowing the Arlham fight song,
Speaker 2: which is traditionally chanted fast and at loud volume. Fight
Speaker 2: fight inner Light, kill Quakers, kill, knock them dead, beat
Speaker 2: them senseless, do it till we reach consensus? In a
Speaker 2: pause for a second and say that is the best
Speaker 2: fight song I have ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: It is. It also seems like the most non Quaker
Speaker 1: string of words I can ever consider I'll kill.
Speaker 2: The inner light part and the consensus part are very Quaker,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the fighting and knocking dead and beating him
Speaker 2: senses is like not what you would typically expect when
Speaker 2: discussing Quakers who tend to be pacifist. So anyway, to
Speaker 2: return to the email, one of the highlights of my
Speaker 2: Earlam career was the two hours of orientation my senior
Speaker 2: year that I got to dress as Big Earl the Quaker,
Speaker 2: our mascot. It was a blazingly hot and humid August day,
Speaker 2: so I was quite ready for my shift to be done,
Speaker 2: but I remember him fondly. Uh ps. By probable total coincidence.
Speaker 2: This episode published on Earlham Day. It's an annual alumni
Speaker 2: and others fundraiser that tries to help our tiny rural
Speaker 2: liberal arts schools stay afloat in increasingly expensive times. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for this email. K. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much again for sending me the best fight song I
Speaker 2: have ever heard in my life. I was so delighted
Speaker 2: about this that I sent it to multiple people. Thank
Speaker 2: you as well for the pictures. I'm gonna see. I
Speaker 2: gotta adjust my laptop. Here is the picture Holly of
Speaker 2: K being very relieved after getting out of this mascot costume.
Speaker 2: Thank you again so much, Ka, I loved this email
Speaker 2: a lot. Before we go on to our sign off,
Speaker 2: we've gotten a number of queries lately about our mailing address,
Speaker 2: and we have said a couple of times that we
Speaker 2: were between offices. That between offices state lasted for many months,
Speaker 2: longer than I think anyone expected that it was going to.
Speaker 2: It was a very long time. We are now as
Speaker 2: a business. The iHeart Podcast studio is opening for business.
Speaker 2: We would like to very gently discourage the sending of
Speaker 2: physical gifts because while we know people want to reach
Speaker 2: out to us and want to connect, and we do
Speaker 2: love the thought genuinely, we love the thought behind all
Speaker 2: of this. In our old office space, it became something
Speaker 2: that was no longer manageable for us and for our
Speaker 2: office staff. This new space is really focused mostly on
Speaker 2: podcast recording studios. Neither of us is going to have
Speaker 2: like a permanent desk space that is ours to receive
Speaker 2: mail at. So we love you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Anyone who has ever thought to send us something, We
Speaker 2: don't think we're going to be able to accept that
Speaker 2: in a way that feels workable for everyone who is
Speaker 2: involved with things like managing what's coming into and going
Speaker 2: out of the new studio space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Since I am the only one adjacent to
Speaker 1: that studio and adjacent isn't doing a lot of lifting,
Speaker 1: it's quite a drive for me. It's almost an hour
Speaker 1: drive if there's any traffic at all, because of like
Speaker 1: where I am in the city and where it is
Speaker 1: in the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I on the occasions, even when we were in
Speaker 1: the old space and we were working from home more,
Speaker 1: it was like I would go and they would just
Speaker 1: hand me several packing boxes and be like, right, here's
Speaker 1: all your stuff, and I would be like, I'm gonna cry.
Speaker 1: I can't go through all this. I do not have, yeah,
Speaker 1: with all our time. So I mean, the thing is
Speaker 1: if you're like, oh, but I really want to send it.
Speaker 1: Please know, even if you did, we either would not
Speaker 1: get it because I don't go in at all anymore
Speaker 1: except on very rare occasions. I live in another state,
Speaker 1: and if we did, it's kind of going to get
Speaker 1: lost in the shuffle or it won't get unpacked for
Speaker 1: literally possibly more than a year. So it's again I
Speaker 1: want to reiterate with Tracy. So we are so grateful
Speaker 1: and really delay in the fact that people share things
Speaker 1: with us and and want to send us things, But
Speaker 1: you should put those resources in a place that makes
Speaker 1: you happy and pretend that's a gift from us.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Your gifts to us could be a donation
Speaker 2: to your local food bank, book donated to your local library,
Speaker 2: book sale, like any anything. So again, it's one of
Speaker 2: those things that I feel guilty even even making this request.
Speaker 2: We love all of you, for sure, we just do
Speaker 2: not We do not want to have a situation where
Speaker 2: one of us walks into the office after months possibly
Speaker 2: of not being there, and uh and like then there's
Speaker 2: to the glowering office manager and our office manager is
Speaker 2: amazing not ah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Literally, my desk when I still had one,
Speaker 1: would look like a giant like shipping container. Or trash
Speaker 1: pile when I got there, because occasionally some good soul
Speaker 1: had without me, I still don't know who it was.
Speaker 1: Was like I'll start opening things for them, and then
Speaker 1: they would just get piled on top of each other,
Speaker 1: and then like presumably probably cleaning crew would move things,
Speaker 1: and like the two and from situation was getting a
Speaker 1: little yeah jumbled. So I still have things I don't
Speaker 1: know who sent them, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had gone through everything that I knew about
Speaker 2: that was addressed to me or was mine at the
Speaker 2: office before we moved out of that space. And yet
Speaker 2: when the final move out happens, I got a couple
Speaker 2: of big boxes shipped to me, and I know you
Speaker 2: got more than a couple of boxes sent to you.
Speaker 1: So the courier van showed up in my front yard.
Speaker 1: It just started unloading like a team of people, and
Speaker 1: I was like, uh oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So again with all possible love, virtual communications are best.
Speaker 2: And on that note, if you would like to write
Speaker 2: to us about this or any other podcast, Word History
Speaker 2: podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We're all over social media
Speaker 2: at Miston History. That's where you can find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Speaker 2: and Instagram. You can subscribe to our show on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app or wherever else do you like to get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 2: favorite shows.