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The Wall Street Journal reports that along with hard, chewy meat called “woody breast,” “spaghetti meat” is allegedly the result of breeding to make big-breasted chickens grow faster.
So, there is more meat per bird and more profit to be made.
“There is proof that these abnormalities are associated with fast-growing birds,” Dr. Massimiliano Petracci, a professor of agriculture and food science at the University of Bologna in Italy, tells the WSJ.
“Woody breast” and “spaghetti meat” might sound unsettling, but eating them won’t hurt you, according to industry experts.
But it will hurt the chickens, whose big bodies are too large for their little legs to hold.
Chubby chickens
Judging by numbers released from the National Chicken Council, broiler chickens – chickens grown for meat – grow a lot faster than in the past. In 2000, the average bird went to market at 47 days old, weighing 5.03 pounds, and in 2023, the average chicken still goes to market at day 47, but now the chubby chickens weigh in at 6.54 pounds.
Comparing these numbers to almost one century ago, broilers took 112 days to grow to a 2.5-pound market weight in 1925.
These changes reflect the increasing demand for white meat over the past century, motivating the industry’s shift to supply chickens with “proportionally larger breasts.”
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