This is why my breeding program has grown into the "for the table" method. LOVE our extra cockerels, can't have too many! Dud hen? Stew. Humane, happy, healthy stew. I know where they were, how they were treated, what they ate and how it all ended. I know what they were soaked in, I know what they were flavored with and I don't inject them with filler fluids to increase weight. No preservatives needed, no Salmonella bath needed. They weren't packed in China.
I don't have to watch the above videos, my vegan/vegetarian friends have already shown me. I remind them that "Organic" can mean a lot of different things, based on what country you're in. Oil derived? Oh, it's of the Earth, so that's organic! "Natural" flavors? Yum! (not)
What did I learn first hand as a hobby breeder? Extra boys happen. About 50% of the time. No bantam or lean and efficient bird will come here again for hatching eggs if they can't reach a reasonable table size. I went back and forth on raising Cornish cross but in the end I can't raise the exact same bird that's meant for fast growth and an early "product" end.
Treating meat as a product is what tanked the whole thing and got us where we're at. That and the fact that there's just this huge, hungry human population.
I read an article that talked about how if other developing countries caught up in meat consumption, the commercial methods couldn't even keep up with it. Which says to me that meat shouldn't be that cheap.
Historically... meat never was cheap. You owned the cow or you bought the cow. Or you had to hike out and hunt the deer or check the trap lines. Bacon was for the poor. The fatty cuts, the tough meat... it wasn't ground up and chemically tenderized to be the burger with fries, way back when, that was the cheapest meat you could get from the butcher, along with the neck, or stew bones. Back when we had professional butchers in every town.
Sunday chicken dinner used to be special. It was effort or it was costly.
Then meat got easy and cheap. Meat should be about 30% of the diet. We eat a LOT more than that in the US, as a statistic.
The National Chicken Council said in 2018 Americans will eat a record 93 pounds per person in 2018, even amid heightened safety concerns. Over the years, the population has swayed more towards chicken than beef.
I mean, seriously, Americans eat a lot of meat. Here's the breakdown...
https://www.meatinstitute.org/index.php?ht=d/sp/i/47465/pid/47465
42.2 BILLION pounds of chicken was produced IN the US in 2017. Does that even account for imports? I don't know.
You know what that 42.2 Billion pounds doesn't have with it? How many cockerel chicks of not-meat breeds had to find a different situation since they weren't destined to be a layer hen.
2017 Layer Hen population was 351.5 million. Is that just the commercial farms getting counted? What happened to all those that hatched as male? Well... nevermind.
It's too big to think about. It's really a daunting scale. So I only worry about the birds I hatch/raise and try to keep my "outside" chicken consumption to a minimum. It's dang near impossible not to be a hypocrite but I'm not going to embrace the times we're in either.
In other news, Costco is moving to produce their own chicken through their own contracted farmers, so that they can ensure a cheap price for their rotisserie chicken. 15 year contracts offered to the farmers. Originally they were going to try to to keep all of the farms within a 100 mile radius of the processing plant but have since had to look further.
People need to eat, there's no way around it. Options can be incredibly limited by where a person lives or what things cost. There is no easy answer and there is no fix-all. All we have readily available is personal choices and decisions that are within our means.
We can't afford to go buy the type of meat we raise. We can afford to keep chickens and go the labor intensive route! It's more fun and satisfying anyways, on the good days when you're not processing. Like hatch day, when more boys than girls isn't a bad thing.
My dogs get a decent Lamb and Rice kibble to supplement their home raised chicken/turkey, instead of "chicken meal" based kibble. Pretty sure I know where all those layer type cockerel chicks went.