Mon, 03 Nov 2008

Chicken Industry Threatened by Inbreeding

Good grief! Look where the blame is laid:

Market-driven chicken farming has produced a race of genetically homogeneous fowl in dire need of new blood.

Here's some news for the morons at Wired: all farming is market driven. It's factory farming that's the problem - not the market. The Soviet Union, certainly never a market economy, pioneered in factory farming. They called them "collectives", we call them "corporations".

In fact, this "threat" to the chicken "industry" is the market correcting them for their shortsighted errors: I have no problem with diversity when I breed meat birds here on the farm. They cost a bit more, true, but they're healthy, happy and yummy. And I'll be breeding chickens long after Tyson and Perdue run out of genes.

So don't blame the market: thank it for punishing folks who can't look beyond the next quarterly report.

A small gene pool and prolonged inbreeding have reduced the genetic diversity of commercial chickens to the point that they are more vulnerable to disease or even bioterror attacks.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

/Agriculture | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 11/4/2008 03:26:49
Eric Schwenke wrote

On 11/9/2008 17:47:59
Tania Silver wrote

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