LOEBS: Beak Capitalism, Part 2: The Chickenization of Everything

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

News, Investing, Business, News Commentary, Business News

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Odd Lots team is analyzing the US economy through the lens of chicken. In this second episode of our special three-part series, we look at the birds themselves and the people who farm them. Because the way we actually get chicken has changed a lot over the years, with the industry evolving from backyard birds to huge poultry companies that outsource chicken growing to independent contractors. Farmers often say they are taking on most of the risk of raising chicks, while the big poultry companies get most of the upside. And this model of farming is becoming more popular in other agricultural areas too. So what does the way chickens are produced say about the labor market, the way it’s structured, and the distribution of risk and profits? We speak with chicken growers, agricultural experts, and more.

This episode was updated on November 19th, 2024 to reflect a clarification —it wasn’t until 2013 that Craig Watts sent a film of his barns to his production manager. In 2014 is when he partnered with a human rights activist to produce that exposé on chicken farming.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bloomberg Audio Studios.
0:05.3	Podcasts, Radio, News.
0:11.3	But besides being a good egg layer, the chicken of tomorrow will be an improved meat producer.
0:24.6	Here's an example of the progress that's been made already.
0:30.6	Notice how breeding has increased the amount of meat on the breast.
0:34.6	Look at that drumstick.
0:41.1	This bird was fattened in the same length of time, and on the same amount of feed as the other one.
0:42.3	Make your own guess as to which is the more profitable to raise.
0:47.2	For much of America's history, chickens look different to the way they do today.
0:51.8	They were thin, elegant even.
0:54.7	Slim and upright, the average bird weighed about two and a half pounds in the 1920s.
1:00.1	And chickens were raised differently, too.
1:02.3	On small farms and homesteads, the birds and their eggs provided a valuable source of extra protein
1:07.7	and the occasional Sunday roast for millions of Americans.
1:15.0	But today, chickens are front-loaded, feathered freaks.
1:19.3	After years of commercial breeding, the weight of your run-of-the-mill roaster has more than doubled to a chunky five or six pounds, way more than chickens of the past.
1:28.0	Chickens as our great grandparents would have understood them looked very different from chickens today.
1:34.8	They were scrawny. They were ranger. They could move around a barnyard, and they could flap up into trees and avoid predators.
1:45.7	And that's almost nothing like the chickens that we eat today.
1:49.1	So if you went back to the time of, I guess, our great grandparents, let's say at the beginning
1:55.0	of the 20th century, people didn't eat chicken that often.
2:00.7	And that seems very bizarre to us now in the era. People didn't eat chicken that often.
	...

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