OCR Text |
Show Three hens in every pot? We are what we eat and what we eat may be as much the product of the test tube as the field and farm . Take the chicken! Back in 1930, the typical chicken was a tough, over-aged over-aged bird. She didn't go to the pot until she stopped laying lay-ing eggs. People ate an average av-erage of only 16 pounds -of chicken each per year then. Over the next 50 years, scientists bred a new kind of bird specifically for the dinner din-ner table plump and tender. By 1980, scientists and good farm management had made it possible for one farmer to produce as many as 250,000 broilers a year. What's more, the modern poultry producer can raise this tender bird to eating size in six to seven weeks, Instead of the four months It took 50 years ago. Though we are eating four times as much chicken as our grandparents were, farm -ers are actually producing ten times as much chicken. Most of the Increase feeds the 100 millionmoreAmeri-cans millionmoreAmeri-cans who make up our population popu-lation today, and the rest -all 800 million pounds per year - is exported. |