Playing chicken with sustainability: the fast-growing chicken debate

Even with a wealth of technology at their fingertips, some chicken producers may be rolling back production practices to meet the demands of companies hoping to build their brand by differentiating how animals are raised. Whole Foods Market and other retailers have agreed to a set of principles from the Global Animal Partnership that includes replacing current fast-growing chickens with slower-growing chickens by 2024.Proponents of modern poultry production point to scientific research showing that chickens today, in addition to growing faster, are stronger and healthier than ever before. In addition, today’s breed of chicken has a much smaller environmental footprint.In the age of climate change, the impact of a transition to slower growing birds is a critical ethical consideration that is frequently ignored. If only one-third of broiler chicken producers switched to a slower growing breed, nearly 1.5 billion more birds would be needed annually to produce the same amount of meat currently produced – requiring a tremendous increase in water, land and fuel consumption:  Additional feed: Enough to fill 670,000 additional tractor trailers on the road per year, using millions more gallons of fuel annually.Additional land: Growing the feed (corn and soybeans) needed would require 7.6 million acres annually, roughly the size of Maryland.Additional manure: Slower growing chickens stay on farms longer, producing 28.5 billion additional pounds of manure annually.   Additional water needed: 1 billion additional gallons of water per year for the chickens to drink