Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Friends and neighbors, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realists, we know you know, we know the score.
Speaker 3: A lot of us are snacking on something, having a
Speaker 3: little nash as we as we tune into these episodes
Speaker 3: or to our strange news or listener mail. Just want
Speaker 3: to give you a heads up. If you're eating, this
Speaker 3: might not be the jam for you. It might not
Speaker 3: be the jelly. It might not be the chicken salad
Speaker 3: that you were seeking.
Speaker 4: I'll have chicken, guys, but I still have yet to
Speaker 4: come around on chicken salad.
Speaker 5: It weirds me out. Just saying it out loud kind.
Speaker 4: Of weirds me out a little bit, even though I
Speaker 4: like everything that it contains, But something about it being
Speaker 4: this like gulash of like pasty, kind of mayonnaisy.
Speaker 5: Chicken just wears me out.
Speaker 4: But I know there are chicken salad people who are like, no,
Speaker 4: you just have to have the right one, and please
Speaker 4: let us know your recipe. What's a good chicken salad
Speaker 4: recipe that'll turn a denier like myself?
Speaker 2: Crepes, add grape, okay, and then put it on raisin bread.
Speaker 3: You could add all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I love
Speaker 3: this question because chicken salad is such an umbrella term,
Speaker 3: and salad can be confusing because I believe a lot
Speaker 3: of us in the US associated purely with vegetable or
Speaker 3: produce salads. But the edemal like salad in culinary terms,
Speaker 3: is just a mixture of stuff put to get owns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think part of it also, it might be
Speaker 4: that expression you can't make chicken shit into chicken salad.
Speaker 5: I just think that sticks.
Speaker 3: With me for an expression.
Speaker 5: It really is.
Speaker 4: It's a thing because it's like it's like putting what
Speaker 4: do they say, a sow's year into a silk purse
Speaker 4: from a sow's year.
Speaker 5: It's kind of the same idea that one.
Speaker 3: Well, it makes sense that chicken would be a go
Speaker 3: to in so many figures of speech were idioms because
Speaker 3: it's one of the world's most popular meats. Like, as
Speaker 3: we record tonight, billions of human beings are eating billions
Speaker 3: of chickens in one form or another. Every year. More
Speaker 3: than sixty billion chickens are killed at some point in
Speaker 3: the production process because they're part of the planets or
Speaker 3: one of the planet's largest industrialized livestock programs in all
Speaker 3: of human history. I mean even gosh, not too long ago,
Speaker 3: we were talking about how an argument over boneless wings
Speaker 3: recently went to the courts in Ohio. Remember that one.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it was a very controversial debate there, very contentious.
Speaker 5: A lot of people really had a bone pick.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, there it is not there, it is no apologies.
Speaker 2: Well, some important stuff. What does boneless actually mean?
Speaker 3: Sure? What does organic mean? What is antibiotic free?
Speaker 5: Was there once a bone that was removed? Is that
Speaker 5: the key?
Speaker 2: Just because we say it's boneless doesn't mean there's no bones.
Speaker 3: Or is there a translation era? Is it bone comma less?
Speaker 3: You know, like fewer bones. That seems to be what
Speaker 3: the court's going with.
Speaker 4: I just think it's funny that there's also like the
Speaker 4: flip side of that that is considered a feature, which
Speaker 4: is bone in like a ribbi, you know, a fancy
Speaker 4: steak that have bone in before it.
Speaker 5: Like, that's what you want.
Speaker 3: Chick and thigh.
Speaker 5: We left zachy just hick you.
Speaker 3: Guys, chicken die with bone end man. That's the way
Speaker 3: to go for our home cooks, as long as you're
Speaker 3: not vegetarian or vegan. And speaking of a mixture of things.
Speaker 3: In a previous conversation, uh we in we had a
Speaker 3: series wherein we investigated the dark side of the livestock
Speaker 3: industry overall. This time we're back with a new cluck
Speaker 3: to step two. We're scoping in on one creature in particular,
Speaker 3: one entity in particular, a thing that spans the globe
Speaker 3: the same way the Dutch East India Company spanned the
Speaker 3: globe in days of old. We're talking about Big Chicken,
Speaker 3: and not the uh, not the weird statue a little
Speaker 3: north of the Atlanta metro.
Speaker 5: Area with that googly eye watching you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, KFC's Big Chicken. Uh It's I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a hater. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to say it's worth visiting. If you have one day
Speaker 3: in the Atlanta area before your next flight. But if
Speaker 3: you find yourself here for let's say four days or
Speaker 3: a week, and you've got a car, you got wheels,
Speaker 3: then why not drive by it? It's you know, it's
Speaker 3: a spectacle.
Speaker 4: It makes some lists, you know, of roadside oddities. I
Speaker 4: think it's worth, you know, checking off of your particular list.
Speaker 2: If that's your thing, Drive by the Big Chicken and
Speaker 2: then enjoy a Chick fil a sand.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, Even though Big Chicken is from KFC, exactly
Speaker 3: what it used to be a sign for a KFC,
Speaker 3: and I don't think it's there anymo.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the chicken remains.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So it looks like we got to get
Speaker 3: up there too, get some fieldwork in. Big Chicken is huge.
Speaker 3: There are dozens of conspiracy surrounding this. There are thousands
Speaker 3: of controversies, and there's some dark stuff on the horizon.
Speaker 3: But how did we get here? To answer that, we're
Speaker 3: going to have to learn a little bit about chickens.
Speaker 6: Yeah, here are the facts, all right.
Speaker 3: We did some episodes. We and our colleagues did some
Speaker 3: episodes on domestication as a concept over the almost two
Speaker 3: decades now. And if you want to learn more about domestication.
Speaker 3: Highly recommend stuff you should know by our pals Josh
Speaker 3: and Chuck. If you want to learn about the domestication
Speaker 3: of dogs, check out our series on ridiculous History. If
Speaker 3: you want to learn about the domestication of chickens, you're
Speaker 3: gonna have to break past some assumptions. Assumptions I thought
Speaker 3: we all had, you know, I always assumed that the
Speaker 3: domestication of the bird we call the chicken was ancient.
Speaker 3: It was like pre recorded history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was thought for a long time, like sheeper goats,
Speaker 4: that they were domesticated around eleven thousand years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like chickens are actually, in comparison, quite
Speaker 3: new to the domestication game, just about three to four
Speaker 3: thousand years ago. And it is. This is a cool,
Speaker 3: weird fact. The domestication occurs in step with the cultivation
Speaker 3: of rice in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2: Makes sense. Chicken and rice, they go together, nice.
Speaker 5: Very good dish.
Speaker 4: And I believe the original birds that were domesticated were
Speaker 4: called wild red jungle fowl from Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's inn't that funny. Humans have been terrified of
Speaker 2: chickens for a long time, just so afraid of them.
Speaker 2: Didn't want them around the houses. Just keep those chickens away.
Speaker 2: A little dinosaurs and can get behind that. Get out
Speaker 2: of here.
Speaker 5: They were frecky little guys. Man. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: They will eat each other. They are. Yeah, they're very
Speaker 3: different personalities, but personalities they do possess. It wasn't until
Speaker 3: twenty twenty we'll go to Science magazine here that a
Speaker 3: study of a deep study of chicken genes like DNA
Speaker 3: of modern chickens confirmed a humble jungle foul. The Gallus
Speaker 3: Gallus spedicus subspecies was the ancestor of living chickens, sort
Speaker 3: of the avi and eve in this situation, and chickens
Speaker 3: share more of their DNA with that specific subspecies than
Speaker 3: any other subspecies, and this helped the scientists do some forensics.
Speaker 3: They narrowed down the side of domestication to Southeast Asia,
Speaker 3: and then they did a couple of other studies, all
Speaker 3: to research the original assumption that everybody grew up with,
Speaker 3: which was that chickens were domesticated back when the sheep
Speaker 3: and the goat was domesticated. There's a cool team up
Speaker 3: between a paleo anatomis and a bio archaeologist specialized in domestication,
Speaker 3: which I didn't know was a job you could have.
Speaker 3: So shout out to Joris Peters and Gregor Larsen. They
Speaker 3: went around the world, you guys, in two separate studies
Speaker 3: looking into sites of antiquity that happened to have chicken bones,
Speaker 3: whether in a campfire pot or whether buried with a
Speaker 3: human as you would bury a beloved pet.
Speaker 4: Man. If they ever have to reassess bioarchaeologically the nature
Speaker 4: of chickens, Atlanta will be the perfect site for chicken bones.
Speaker 5: It's there got a more lousy with them. They're everywhere.
Speaker 4: The joke online is very much based on the reality
Speaker 4: of living in the city.
Speaker 2: They find their way into that red clay and then
Speaker 2: they'll be there for the future. It is interesting, just
Speaker 2: this concept of having chickens as pets. I was being
Speaker 2: silly there talking about scary little you know dinosaurs and but.
Speaker 3: No, it's true.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 2: No, if you've spent any time around chickens, whether it's
Speaker 2: just you know, a couple, maybe it's just six to
Speaker 2: twelve or something like that, that are being raised for
Speaker 2: their egg production or something like that. Uh, these animals
Speaker 2: are can be at least extremely affectionate and curious and
Speaker 2: like interested in humans in some way I could say,
Speaker 2: down to hang around you, and it's it's actually I
Speaker 2: can imagine it. I can imagine a chicken making a
Speaker 2: really cool pet, maybe more dog.
Speaker 3: Well, they form bonds for sure, like they're Another stereotype
Speaker 3: we have to bust is the myth of being bird brained,
Speaker 3: because chickens can have complex emotional lives. They recognize humans.
Speaker 3: They you know, they experience pain and joy and grief
Speaker 3: and curiosity and you know, all the hits, all the
Speaker 3: slow jazz, which means that there are also and I'm
Speaker 3: only saying this because I met a few, there also
Speaker 3: are some evil chickens. There are some like villainous like
Speaker 3: dommer level chickens. It's weird, but it does indicate, you know,
Speaker 3: that point about their emotional complexity. The oldest what we
Speaker 3: will call chicken bones discovered so far. They come from
Speaker 3: a place in Thailand, in central Thailand named bond Non Watt,
Speaker 3: and they show up around the time ancient farmers started
Speaker 3: growing and cultivating rice. So our best guess is this
Speaker 3: rice cultivation led to rice seeds being scattered around, right,
Speaker 3: and this was amazing for the wild jungle fowl that
Speaker 3: you mentioned earlier and old, because that thing was basically
Speaker 3: just play in the lottery every time at peck in
Speaker 3: the dirt, hoping it came up with something it could eat.
Speaker 3: And now all of a sudden, yes, yeah there's literal
Speaker 3: pay dirt. That was really nice. Yeah, there's literal pay dirt.
Speaker 3: And the birds begin nesting at the edges of these
Speaker 3: cultivated rice fields, which means over time they slowly acclimate
Speaker 3: to humans and can currently humans acclimate to them. Fast
Speaker 3: forward thousands of years. Yeah, chickens got the raw end
Speaker 3: of the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've played Minecraft. If you have seeds around,
Speaker 2: those chickens will hang around you, and if you give
Speaker 2: them some seeds, they get little hearts over their heads
Speaker 2: and they procreate.
Speaker 4: Oh that's sort of like given the dog a treat
Speaker 4: and legend of Zelda or in Breath of the Wild,
Speaker 4: and give the dog an apple and it starts to
Speaker 4: like emote these hearts and then it'll follow you around.
Speaker 3: Oh, just for a rule of three, if you cast
Speaker 3: speak to animals and boulders gate three, then you can
Speaker 3: also befriend dogs and owl bear. I don't want to
Speaker 3: spoil it too much a strange ox Okay, a strange
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil like it's a whole fricking storyline.
Speaker 5: Man, I've got it. I'm gonna you know what I'm gonna.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna start digging back into it after I start
Speaker 4: civilization whatever the new one is, and after I hunt
Speaker 4: a few more monsters and monster hunter wilds, which is
Speaker 4: a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right. We also know in the in the
Speaker 3: large sense, there's there's an evolutionary dilemma. So being domesticated
Speaker 3: by humans on this planet means that your species will
Speaker 3: become one of the most prolific species on the planet. Right,
Speaker 3: Like cows are everywhere, you know, chickens are everywhere, But
Speaker 3: as an individual instance of that species, your life is
Speaker 3: probably gonna suck, unless you're like maybe a dog or
Speaker 3: we could bracket cats. They sort of domesticated themselves. But
Speaker 3: the weird fact going into this industry of consuming chickens
Speaker 3: is that chicken and rice was probably always a thing.
Speaker 3: Logically it may have been. It probably was the world's
Speaker 3: first chicken dish, and even then we see a pattern
Speaker 3: from these studies. It takes a while for humans to
Speaker 3: think of these jungle foul, even after they're domesticated as
Speaker 3: a food source. First, what we see is that for
Speaker 3: a long time people looked at them as sort of
Speaker 3: a real life Pokemon flex. I got a living alarm clock.
Speaker 3: Look at these feathers, dog, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and the eggs, the eggs I guarantee were
Speaker 2: cultivated before the actual chicken meat. Who figured the eggs
Speaker 2: are useful in so many different ways?
Speaker 3: It's a returning investment too.
Speaker 4: But who figured that out these weird orbs, that these
Speaker 4: little guys poop out, that we could do something with them.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know trial and error and all that,
Speaker 4: but I always wonder who first cracked an egg and try.
Speaker 2: Eating it raw?
Speaker 4: And I was like, Okay, that's kind of gross. What
Speaker 4: if I had he it up over a fire? And
Speaker 4: now it's this lovely, you know, pillowy delicacy. It's the
Speaker 4: mushroom question It is, really is what's our rate of attrition?
Speaker 4: How many bad eggs did people encounter?
Speaker 3: First?
Speaker 4: Well, and also, you know you're not supposed to eat
Speaker 4: raw eggs, But isn't that more a product of modern farming?
Speaker 4: Like do you think back then it would have been
Speaker 4: totally fine to eat raw eggs, or were they still
Speaker 4: prone to having some sort of food borne illness.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's maybe the wrong one for right now, but it's
Speaker 5: just I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's the whole trajectory of how we got to eating eggs.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Well, I just.
Speaker 2: Imagine if you have greens around, like lots of greens
Speaker 2: that are being produced, no matter what type it is, right,
Speaker 2: even if it's rice, and you've got an egg product
Speaker 2: like or just an egg, and you combine that in
Speaker 2: just as an experiment and realize, oh, this is a
Speaker 2: really good binder behind.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, the harsh reality is that most people were starving.
Speaker 3: You know, food security was a huge concern. Also, it
Speaker 3: makes me think, while we're just while we're gaming this out,
Speaker 3: there may have been some pivotal moment where the rat
Speaker 3: would have replaced the chicken grains edges of fields tolerance
Speaker 3: for humans, the egg was probably the deciding factor. Honestly,
Speaker 3: the egg and the slightly at that point larger size.
Speaker 5: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, other little rodent like creatures like the guinea
Speaker 2: pig became a major source of food in other places
Speaker 2: right that hang out where the grains hang.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we see a pattern and we can't answer
Speaker 3: why nature or why this version of reality swung to
Speaker 3: one pivot point or the next, but we can tell
Speaker 3: you over really give you fast forward through thousands of years.
Speaker 3: Can we get a fast forward queue thousands of years?
Speaker 3: There is a domesticated chicken industry. Big Chicken is real.
Speaker 3: It's global. The domesticated chicken spread far and wide. We're
Speaker 3: talking about multi like a multi, multi billion dollar initiative.
Speaker 3: It's across the world anywhere you go. Right, Chicken is
Speaker 3: for people who eat meat. Chicken is one of the
Speaker 3: most accessible versions of protein.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: It's one of the few that is not explicitly banned
Speaker 3: in other meat eating religions, like you can't eat pork everywhere,
Speaker 3: you can't eat beef everywhere, you can't eat certain shellfish everywhere.
Speaker 3: But unless your religion for bids animal products at all,
Speaker 3: chicken's fine.
Speaker 5: Chickens good to go, baby, exactly.
Speaker 2: We just need, you know, millions and millions and millions
Speaker 2: of them, because there's some hungry people in this planet.
Speaker 3: Right, billions. Yeah, which brings us to the chicken industry today.
Speaker 3: Maybe kick some stats.
Speaker 5: Let's do do that.
Speaker 4: But I really quickly just think it's appropriate to bring
Speaker 4: up this little reference right before the section.
Speaker 5: You guys know the rapper Rick Ross, Yes, which one? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, the the not the namesake.
Speaker 5: I think that's right.
Speaker 4: Rick Ross is an Atlanta rapper and entrepreneur, and he
Speaker 4: owns a massive two hundred and thirty five acre estate
Speaker 4: in Fayetteville, Georgia that he calls the Promised Land, and
Speaker 4: he's into all kinds of farming, including bison. And I
Speaker 4: think he's either considering getting into chickens or he already has.
Speaker 4: But there's this excellent interview with them on Vince Staples
Speaker 4: podcast where he's describing being surrounded by chicken cages and
Speaker 4: chickens roaming around.
Speaker 5: He goes, it's there everywhere, going, you know, quack quack
Speaker 5: quack quack quack quack.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, that makes sense. He's he is the same
Speaker 3: guy who invited people to just d m him if
Speaker 3: they want parachute into his estate in I want to
Speaker 3: say Florida, but it may have been Faettville as well. Well.
Speaker 4: I take to tell you, Rick Ross, but chickens don't
Speaker 4: say quack, they say buck.
Speaker 2: Do you think he's okay. He's either never seen or
Speaker 2: been in the chicken areas of his estate, or he's
Speaker 2: in fact raising ducks.
Speaker 5: Unclear. Unclear.
Speaker 4: Well, so, as of twenty twenty four, the United States,
Speaker 4: with Rick Ross contributing to this, potentially had an inventory
Speaker 4: of over five hundred and twenty million chickens and two
Speaker 4: hundred and eighteen million turkeys. The market leader for poultry
Speaker 4: production in the United States is, of course Tyson. Maybe not,
Speaker 4: of course. I just think they've got a big presence
Speaker 4: here in this part of the country, for sure, These
Speaker 4: chicken plants with over forty three billion US dollars in sales.
Speaker 2: WHOA, don't forget per due farms, guys, don't forget all
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 4: To be confused with produce far mart that's pretty far right.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there are a couple other players in the game.
Speaker 3: Tyson is the big one, but there is a pantheon
Speaker 3: in the United States at least. And now we have
Speaker 3: to look at the difference between how these how these
Speaker 3: chickens exist. They're laying chickens which make eggs until they're slaughtered,
Speaker 3: and then there are broiler chickens, which are grown for
Speaker 3: a short time to an enormous size and then slaughtered.
Speaker 3: Broiler chickens are the majority source of US chicken meat.
Speaker 3: There's sixty seven percent of all poultry sector sales, that's
Speaker 3: per the USDA. And there is an explosive trend here.
Speaker 3: In less than sixty years, the number of broiler chickens
Speaker 3: has skyrocketed. There were five hundred and eighty million annually
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties. They're like nine billion now in
Speaker 3: more recent years. So that's a that's a percentage raise
Speaker 3: of about fourteen broiler chickens.
Speaker 5: Think your cost co Rotisseri guys.
Speaker 2: Right, well, no, any chicken that is raised for meat,
Speaker 2: that's what the broilers are. And all chicken well, ninety
Speaker 2: five percent of the chickens raised for meat in this
Speaker 2: country are represented by the National Chicken Council, you guys.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, we were talking about this off air. I'm
Speaker 3: I've been reading a lot of their works, the National
Speaker 3: Chicken good writing.
Speaker 2: They've got a great YouTube channel, y'all. It's and this
Speaker 2: is this is real. The National Chicken Council aka Big Chicken.
Speaker 2: They have a YouTube channel with the It is at
Speaker 2: Chicken Roost Roost two four four six, that is their
Speaker 2: YouTube channel.
Speaker 4: And this isn't which you may be consider in and
Speaker 4: of itself a lobby but they employ lobbyists, right, isn't
Speaker 4: that the edge?
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it would call itself
Speaker 7: a trade organization or a trade group, but it is
Speaker 7: extremely active in you.
Speaker 3: Know, in located streets. Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 2: Their their corporate offices are five blocks from the White
Speaker 2: House lawn and uh, they're right over there in the
Speaker 2: same place with stuff like the NAACP in Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: like the same block of places, the American Chemical Society
Speaker 2: and the Natural Resources Defense Council, a bunch of these,
Speaker 2: like I guess, trade groups lobbyists that hang out and
Speaker 2: are able to literally walk over to the White House
Speaker 2: or to Congress and just have a little shit chat
Speaker 2: about that bill or whatever.
Speaker 3: And we've spent time in that neighborhood.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like if you're in the US, you
Speaker 3: might run into this in your own town. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like how multiple car dealerships will be on the
Speaker 3: same street because like attracts like you could argue, but
Speaker 3: for them, proximity is always key in lobbying. And this
Speaker 3: is just the US we're not even talking about China,
Speaker 3: which is the largest producer of chicken and poultry products
Speaker 3: in the world. Together, the US and China represent about
Speaker 3: a third of all the global poultry production, which is
Speaker 3: a terrifying stat when you think about it. It is
Speaker 3: not even really counting the eggs. That's a whole other
Speaker 3: bag of badgers. What we see here already is an
Speaker 3: economic leviathan, and it comes with some advantages. It comes
Speaker 3: with some consequences if we're beaten fair. First, the first
Speaker 3: pro or advantage is that chicken is affordable, so for
Speaker 3: countless people throughout history, throughout recent history, and throughout the
Speaker 3: world today. This means you can have a source of
Speaker 3: protein for your family that you may not have been
Speaker 3: otherwise able to afford. That's the biggest win for humans,
Speaker 3: make no mistake about it, food security. The chicken industry
Speaker 3: represents a tremendous leap forward in that regard. Yet I
Speaker 3: would argue a dangerously imperfect leap forward.
Speaker 5: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure, guys, let's talk about units of meat per meal,
Speaker 2: like when we're thinking about an animal, just thinking about
Speaker 2: the number. We were talking about the number of chickens
Speaker 2: that get slaughtered, right number that are raised and then
Speaker 2: gets slaughtered and then consumed. One broiler chicken theoretically is
Speaker 2: enough food to feed a family of four, maybe five
Speaker 2: even maybe you know you.
Speaker 3: Got a little tyson sitting there in the high chair.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, I'm thinking the big old, big old broiler.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, little Tyson.
Speaker 5: Tyson's the boy's name human.
Speaker 2: Okay, a little Tyson broiler.
Speaker 4: But he gives his own little Tyson broiler for a
Speaker 4: little Tyson.
Speaker 8: A great idea, but just theoretically, that one chicken is
Speaker 8: like a meal, right, so one of theoretically three that
Speaker 8: are going to be had throughout a day.
Speaker 2: You know how standard household or whatever you want to
Speaker 2: you know, allocate those averages for in the United States.
Speaker 2: But if you slaughter a single pig, let's say, I
Speaker 2: mean that's food for a weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, depending on your preservation methods too.
Speaker 5: Are we are we talking?
Speaker 4: Does this stuff line up with the idea of servings
Speaker 4: or are these kind of unrelated?
Speaker 2: This is thought, This is just thinking off. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe number of servings are the the number of animals
Speaker 2: that need to die in.
Speaker 5: Order for meals to be had?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Okay, so like just when we think about the number
Speaker 2: of chickens that have to be raised and killed to
Speaker 2: meet the same number of meals basically that you would
Speaker 2: get if you were instead just slaughtering.
Speaker 3: Cows or meet the number of meals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm serious.
Speaker 3: Quote, yeah, that's true, right right, and also what's the
Speaker 3: environmental footprint? Do check out our episode on the livestock
Speaker 3: industry where we talked a little bit more about beef
Speaker 3: and pork. We we have to tell you that pro
Speaker 3: that advantage at the very beginning, so we know why
Speaker 3: the Humble Chicken became sort of a hellen of food
Speaker 3: security Troy, you know, and launched a thousand dinner tables,
Speaker 3: as they would say. We also need to admit that
Speaker 3: this comes with a panoply of consequences, a rogues gallery really,
Speaker 3: of problems that are ethical, that are practical. Some of
Speaker 3: them are immediate, some of them are long standing, and
Speaker 3: some are on the horizon in a way that can
Speaker 3: be scary to think about, and others still verge into
Speaker 3: downright conspiracies. So we're gonna pause for word from our
Speaker 3: sponsors and we come back. We're gonna ask as honestly
Speaker 3: and as fairly as we can what are some of
Speaker 3: the cons a Big Chicken.
Speaker 2: HPAI, Hewlett Packard artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right, First things first, obviously,
Speaker 3: we're talking about the dark side of Big Chicken. Whether
Speaker 3: you're a huge Chick fil A fan, whether you have
Speaker 3: your favorite chicken wing spot, or whether you're an avowed vegan,
Speaker 3: there's no denying that because of this industry, life absolutely sucks.
Speaker 3: For chicken. Life is just terrible. You know, it's genocide.
Speaker 4: Even though, like you know, best of circumstances, the cage
Speaker 4: free eggs that you pay extra for or whatever, the
Speaker 4: free range chicken. That's all just like the path to death,
Speaker 4: like no matter how you slice it.
Speaker 5: Okay, pun may be a little intended.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, a but and this is a yes but section.
Speaker 2: Sorry guys. Yes, but there are things changing a little
Speaker 2: bit right for chickens. We'll get into that. For all
Speaker 2: the animals, there are some things that theorety theoretically could
Speaker 2: make their lives better before they get slaggered.
Speaker 5: Maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to learn why those changes exist, let's look
Speaker 3: at the current and past state.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Why the changes Matts alluding to are even on the
Speaker 3: proverbial dinner table, right, So factory farming incorporates and institutionalizes
Speaker 3: a collection of horrific methods conditions imposed on chickens. They
Speaker 3: kind of have a disposition matrix toward what creates the
Speaker 3: largest amount of profit and everything that's happening, everything that
Speaker 3: you're about to hear, which may make some of us,
Speaker 3: some of us in the crowd on comfortable, It is
Speaker 3: all in the name of not malevolence, but in the
Speaker 3: name of squeezing a bit more profit out of that
Speaker 3: bottom line out of every single bird. And it starts
Speaker 3: with culling. So it is currently common for producers to
Speaker 3: get a big, a big new generation of chickens, to
Speaker 3: identify all the newly hatched male chicks and to immediately
Speaker 3: kill them to in older days, to just grind them up.
Speaker 3: The logic being these guys don't lay eggs and they
Speaker 3: used to grow too slowly, so a lot of them
Speaker 3: would be ground up and then fed back to the chickens.
Speaker 5: That seems safe.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it just seems like potentially the way
Speaker 4: that you would get like super pathogens or something.
Speaker 3: Yes, nice foreshadowy there, I mean, this doesn't be life
Speaker 3: is great for the survivors of that first cull egg
Speaker 3: laying chickens. Let's say you become a laying chicken. You
Speaker 3: are still in these brutal, very cramped conditions pretty often
Speaker 3: because cage free, by the way, doesn't mean what a
Speaker 3: lot of people assume it means, and an egg laying
Speaker 3: chicken will often get debeat to eliminate inter chicken violence,
Speaker 3: which is otherwise a hilarious phrase, but it's very real.
Speaker 4: Burned off if I'm not mistaken, right, isn't it like
Speaker 4: a process clipped off?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Okay, for some reason, I've seen a process involving some
Speaker 4: sort of very like hot brand of some kind or
Speaker 4: like I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 3: I could see Yeah, I mean it differs. It's always
Speaker 3: going to be what's the cheapest thing for that producer, right,
Speaker 3: And once those once those beaks are clipped or burned,
Speaker 3: otherwise maimed or removed, you'll see a lower level of
Speaker 3: aggression and cannibalism, which would in other circumstances be widespread,
Speaker 3: whereas our pal Frank would say wide rife in this
Speaker 3: very contaminated, cramped environment. The reason that works is because
Speaker 3: it puts the chicken in a state of chronic pain
Speaker 3: for the rest of its short life. So if it attacks,
Speaker 3: if it like it hurts to eat. Imagine your main
Speaker 3: way of aggression, right, or sustenance was your mouth. And imagine,
Speaker 3: you know, shortly after you were born, somebody messed with
Speaker 3: your jaw and your mouth and your nose such that
Speaker 3: it hurts to breathe, it hurts to eat. You're an
Speaker 3: intense pain if you try to bite. That's why it works.
Speaker 2: Now, these growers we're talking, we're talking about this is
Speaker 2: happening for chickens that lay eggs, like lay yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so but those are not the broiler chickens, right, those
Speaker 2: are different. Yeah, those aren't the ones that humans are
Speaker 2: going to eat. Generally, those are for a whole separate purpose.
Speaker 3: Those will tend to have a longer life span, still
Speaker 3: brutally short, but they'll tend to have a longer lifespan.
Speaker 3: We're right. Their eggs, Yeah, they get killed kind of
Speaker 3: in the pecond wave, and all of these creatures live
Speaker 3: a much shorter life than they would live naturally or
Speaker 3: in you know, your backyard.
Speaker 4: I did google chicken beak removal hot, and there is
Speaker 4: a thing for sale online. It is called a chicken
Speaker 4: beak breaker hot. Beak machine automatic beak breaker, and it
Speaker 4: basically has a blade that is heated up to red
Speaker 4: hot and then the the beak is put in there
Speaker 4: and it's it's clipped off using it because it cauterizes it,
Speaker 4: you know, after it clips these that can't be very
Speaker 4: pleasant at all.
Speaker 3: No, again, it gives them chronic pain for the rest
Speaker 3: of their lives when they clip that beak. This doesn't
Speaker 3: even Oh, we got to talk about the size right
Speaker 3: earlier mentioned units of food right end user. So we
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier that modern chickens, now, if you look at them,
Speaker 3: they're going to be way bigger than those jungle foul
Speaker 3: of ancient Southeast Asia. Part of that is due to
Speaker 3: injection of growth hormones juice in the birds. That's illegal
Speaker 3: in the US and Australia currently. But another part of
Speaker 3: the general size disparity comes from something it's even a
Speaker 3: little crazier. It's eugenics. Intense breeding regimens.
Speaker 4: So couple with these extremely cramped conditions you can barely
Speaker 4: call a life. This can also result in chickens that
Speaker 4: are so overweight and burdened by their own heaths that
Speaker 4: they are essentially you know, in invalid I guess, for
Speaker 4: lack of a better term, they are not able to
Speaker 4: move around and operate like a normal creature would. The
Speaker 4: level to which they are plumped up, I guess you
Speaker 4: could say essentially is like completely burdening them at all times.
Speaker 5: They can't even support their own weight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's not their choice. Also, it's a short life.
Speaker 3: It's filled with terror. And we were talking about this earlier.
Speaker 3: It bears emphasis. Anyone who has raised chickens on a
Speaker 3: small scale, A lot of our friends or family, or
Speaker 3: even coworkers outside of that, can confirm chickens do have personalities,
Speaker 3: can experience emotions, which means they know when stuff sucks
Speaker 3: right just like you, they have a problem with it.
Speaker 3: Even the more humane operations out there will use slaughtering
Speaker 3: alternatives like decompression or gas chambers or something called the
Speaker 3: kill cone. The kill cone is where you take a chicken,
Speaker 3: you stuff it headfirst down a funnel, and then you
Speaker 3: pop the head through the opening at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the funnel, and then you slash their neck and then
Speaker 3: bleed out. Those are examples of the more humane alternatives
Speaker 3: to the usual factory slaughters. So the more you learn
Speaker 3: about this industrial level poultry production the worst. It becomes
Speaker 3: a point we were talking about a little bit off air.
Speaker 3: In a lot of animal rights literature, the people who
Speaker 3: would be the polar opposites of the trade lobbies or
Speaker 3: the thing with the autonomy big chicken. A lot of
Speaker 3: those groups vilify the human poultry producers as some kind
Speaker 3: of callous, unfeeling monster. But that could not be further
Speaker 3: from the truth that people are doing the work, by
Speaker 3: which we mean not the lobbyists, not the executives and
Speaker 3: the c suite and whatever. The people on the ground
Speaker 3: are often forced to resort to these barbaric practices just
Speaker 3: a stay of float in a market that continually pushes
Speaker 3: for the bottom line. What we're saying is, in short
Speaker 3: life often sucks for the poultry producers as well. And
Speaker 3: I think that's something a lot of our you know,
Speaker 3: with the best of intentions, a lot of animal rights
Speaker 3: activists forget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we do have to remember that there
Speaker 2: are I don't even know how to say this, because
Speaker 2: everything we're talking about here is a reality, like especially
Speaker 2: when we're getting into the industrial size, like huge chicken
Speaker 2: production situations. I watched a video that was put out
Speaker 2: there in twenty fourteen by the National Chicken Council that
Speaker 2: is going through the slaughter process and the line when
Speaker 2: chickens are being processed into meat, which is just horrifying
Speaker 2: to think about. But they, I mean, they use the
Speaker 2: term that's an industry term, the evisceration line. And if
Speaker 2: you know what that word means, it's like to have
Speaker 2: basically the insides removed, your internal organs taken out of
Speaker 2: a body. That is what they go through. And you
Speaker 2: they show you, like, this is how it works. All
Speaker 2: these chickens that are hanging by their feet after they
Speaker 2: have been you know, killed systematically on this line and
Speaker 2: this giant line of chickens been killed then through their backsides,
Speaker 2: all of it. It just is a claw that goes
Speaker 2: in and evisceraates them and then they get vacuumed out
Speaker 2: and cleansed off with this stuff. Oh what is it called.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a chemical chlorine wash. It's parasitic acid,
Speaker 2: is what it's called. It's hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid
Speaker 2: combined together. It's certain concentrations. According to them, the hydrogen
Speaker 2: peroxide becomes water and the acetic acid is the same
Speaker 2: thing that's in vinegar. So theoretically it's a wash that's
Speaker 2: safe and it kills off all the microbes and now
Speaker 2: you're good to go with your chickens. It's just a
Speaker 2: horrifying thing to watch the kill process, right, But there
Speaker 2: are other things in place thanks to things like the USDA,
Speaker 2: like the Certified Organic label that we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about a little bit, but something like that that gets
Speaker 2: slapped on a meat product, lets you know as a
Speaker 2: consumer that theoretically somebody from a government organization went to
Speaker 2: that farm and certified that those chickens are able to
Speaker 2: roam around freely. It's not some cage system you know
Speaker 2: that's like free range, but still inside a little cage.
Speaker 2: It certifies that, no, those chickens actually go out onto
Speaker 2: this farm and graze and then come back in, and
Speaker 2: that's what you're eating. It's not the chicken in these
Speaker 2: horrifying conditions that we're talking about in these larger industrial versions,
Speaker 2: which is again a step forward towards good potentially, but
Speaker 2: in the end, everybody's getting viscerated no matter how you lived.
Speaker 4: As you said before, a Matt, did you see that
Speaker 4: John Oliver piece from last week tonight on this Yeah,
Speaker 4: Ben pointed it out in the outline here. I actually
Speaker 4: didn't catch it originally, but saw this clip the Bens,
Speaker 4: referring to John Oliver and his writers really look deeply
Speaker 4: into the notion of contract farming. He describes it, I
Speaker 4: think very aptly as basically a chicken daycare company where
Speaker 4: baby chicks are brought into an independent farm, then they're.
Speaker 5: Picked up a month later for processing.
Speaker 4: Ninety seven percent of chickens, they point out, and the
Speaker 4: piece are raised this way in the United States, and
Speaker 4: the big companies actually also own the feed as well
Speaker 4: as the feed bins, so there's this really interesting feedback
Speaker 4: loop or kind of monopoly kind of situation going on.
Speaker 4: The independent farmers, though, are responsible for literally everything else,
Speaker 4: the property, the equipment of the labor, all of that.
Speaker 4: But then you know they're under the thumb of this
Speaker 4: big chicken because of the proprietary nature of the process
Speaker 4: that they have on lock.
Speaker 5: Is that about right, Ben, Yeah, it's like a.
Speaker 3: Share crapping, but with chickens, well not quite, because they
Speaker 3: do own the property, they're they're on the hook. These
Speaker 3: contract farmers, who often get vilified or contract producers, they're
Speaker 3: liable for the majority of the cost involved, right, and if,
Speaker 3: for instance, there is some kind of regulatory violation that
Speaker 3: occurs or that they get popped for, they're on the
Speaker 3: they're they're on the kill cone for that as well.
Speaker 3: We see a ton of producers who are teetering on
Speaker 3: the edge of financial ruin, underwater on loans or debts,
Speaker 3: usually transactions that they depended on to get up and
Speaker 3: running in the first place, or that they relied upon
Speaker 3: as the market cyclically waxed and waned. Right, Because farming
Speaker 3: and livestock production, it's always been a matter of margins,
Speaker 3: you know, and you're dependent upon a lot of factors
Speaker 3: that are simply beyond your control. So it doesn't stop there.
Speaker 3: Worker safety and worker rights in general often fall to
Speaker 3: the wayside in these contract farming arrangements. This system the
Speaker 3: Big Chicken has ox fan thank you, thank you. Ox.
Speaker 3: Fam America found that a lot of slaughterhouse workers, in
Speaker 3: some exhaustive studies, despite having you know, regulatory bodies show
Speaker 3: up and certify stuff, a lot of these slaughterhouse workers
Speaker 3: were not getting brakes to the point where they had
Speaker 3: to wear diapers. They were getting paid below minimum wage,
Speaker 3: and some entities were purposely targeting underage folks, undocumented people,
Speaker 3: people who can't fight back as potential employees so that
Speaker 3: they could keep those expenses low and push to keep
Speaker 3: those profits high.
Speaker 4: All right, why don't we take a little breather here
Speaker 4: this heavy stuff, have a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 4: then we'll be back to find out more about some
Speaker 4: of the pitfalls of this massive industry.
Speaker 3: And we've returned. Another harsh reality of why life can
Speaker 3: be terrible for poultry producers and employees is this. Accidents
Speaker 3: and serious injuries We're talking like amputations are widespread in
Speaker 3: this endeavor. Folks working in this industry on the ground
Speaker 3: are three times more likely to suffer serious harm in
Speaker 3: comparison to the average employee in the United States. There
Speaker 3: was an OSHA study in twenty fifteen that found on
Speaker 3: average employees of Tyson Foods, at least one is injured
Speaker 3: such that they have to amputate a finger or limb
Speaker 3: per month. Per month, there's at least one person who
Speaker 3: you know officially gets the street game.
Speaker 4: Nine fingers, I mean, just pretty horrific. Back to that,
Speaker 4: you know, automatic beak removed room machine. If if I'm
Speaker 4: remember incorrectly, and I've seen this process you know from
Speaker 4: film clips, there are workers that kind of have to
Speaker 4: hold the chicken up to this device to have their
Speaker 4: beaks removed. You know, you can just depend on the
Speaker 4: chicken to do it themselves, and I can imagine that
Speaker 4: could be really, really dangerous. I mean, you're holding a chicken,
Speaker 4: you know, up close to this machine that's like chomping
Speaker 4: off their beak. I mean, that's just one of the
Speaker 4: many dangerous pieces of equipment these folks are interfacing with
Speaker 4: on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you're in the actual slaughterhouse, when all of
Speaker 2: that stuff's going down there, I mean is large, dangerous,
Speaker 2: sharp implements that are a part of the factory, right
Speaker 2: and people have got to service those things, and it's
Speaker 2: just continually moving. There are workers that have large knives
Speaker 2: just at hand at all times when they're there. Even
Speaker 2: the USDA inspectors when they're on the line, they've got
Speaker 2: you know, large knives to to check out and inspect things.
Speaker 2: And then there are people that are constantly just cutting
Speaker 2: away at the chickens to remove a broken wing or
Speaker 2: you know, if there's a chicken that's got uh, it
Speaker 2: was weird to think about. There's a chicken that's all
Speaker 2: bruised up. They'll take it off the line so that
Speaker 2: you don't have to see that, but they can still
Speaker 2: use the meat product in something else, you know.
Speaker 5: Sure, it's just.
Speaker 2: There's there's danger all across the factory system.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. For comparison here, just to give people a
Speaker 3: sense of the numbers, some of the some of the
Speaker 3: machines are measured by the high amounts of chickens, chicks
Speaker 3: or whatever they can process per minute. So we're talking
Speaker 3: wood chippers situations where the machine does not turn off.
Speaker 4: And I would imagine math that any of those bruised
Speaker 4: chickens that aren't you know, fit for sale as a
Speaker 4: as a broiler, you know, for pieces like that, would
Speaker 4: maybe be ground up to being a ground meat product.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, that's color can because.
Speaker 4: That's all you know, like kind of uniformly use what
Speaker 4: is it the pink slime, I believe is what's called.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah, or mechanically separated is another key phrase.
Speaker 3: You will see it and canned chicken. And look, a
Speaker 3: lot of this is that these people, again, people who
Speaker 3: are working in this industry are not bad people. They're
Speaker 3: not malevolent. They're trying to keep their jobs. And the
Speaker 3: companies that are involved in the meat business at a
Speaker 3: high level, at least in the United States, they are
Speaker 3: some incredibly powerful lobbying organizations. They take a lot of
Speaker 3: that profit they're squeezing out of the chicken or whatever livestock,
Speaker 3: and they push it toward influencing politicians and touching policy
Speaker 3: in a way that is increasingly advantageous, creating a feedback loop.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the American Meat Institute, the National Meat Association,
Speaker 3: National Chicken Council. We didn't say it earlier, but you
Speaker 3: may recognize their previous work as the National Broiler Council.
Speaker 3: They changed the name because it was a little, well,
Speaker 3: too little, too close too much. I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they specifically represent those broiler chickens, the meat chickens,
Speaker 2: not the egg layers.
Speaker 3: And there these are powerful groups. They have such a
Speaker 3: strong voice in decision making in Washington, and one of
Speaker 3: the in they're fairly consistent in their work. They're pushing
Speaker 3: back against proposed safety standards. They're pushing back against what
Speaker 3: they see as over regulation. And one of their arguments
Speaker 3: goes returns to the thing we said at the top
Speaker 3: of this evening's episode to food security. Right, We're we're
Speaker 3: self regulating. The argument goes, we accept a certain amount
Speaker 3: of government intervention, but our overall goal is to keep
Speaker 3: meat safe and very affordable. We want it to be
Speaker 3: cheap for the average consumer. So help us, help you, America,
Speaker 3: is their argument at base. This is why chicken is
Speaker 3: cheaper than peanuts. Often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is weird. If you go to the
Speaker 2: National Chicken Council's websites and stuff they do, they advocate
Speaker 2: for that. It's generally advocating for safety, you know, at
Speaker 2: least outwardly. When you look at the press releases and
Speaker 2: stuff that gets put out, it's all about, Hey, the
Speaker 2: antibiotics that everybody is so worried about, You don't got
Speaker 2: to worry about that. They explain to you how the
Speaker 2: antibiotics that go into chickens are never in the meat products,
Speaker 2: and they're tested for that. The USDA protects you as
Speaker 2: a consumer against having antibiotics, and the meat products you
Speaker 2: receive they do go into the chickens, but there is
Speaker 2: the there are these periods where they're no longer allowed
Speaker 2: to have antibiotics, so it'll never get into your body.
Speaker 2: It's fine, which I mean is maybe true. And maybe fine,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't change It doesn't change the actual issues
Speaker 2: with doing something like using antibiotics in chicken products.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, we're definitely we have to dive into that
Speaker 3: because that will bring us to you know, the horizon,
Speaker 3: what rough consequence slouches toward Bethlehem in big chicken industry.
Speaker 3: When we stay just a moment on the realities of
Speaker 3: people in the poultry industry on the ground, it means
Speaker 3: that these big groups, these organizations, these corporations, these who
Speaker 3: fund the trade groups and the lobbies, they have so
Speaker 3: much leverage over employees. If you make too much trouble,
Speaker 3: you raise too much of a ruckus, you ruffle too
Speaker 3: many feathers, you can be blackballed. You're not only cut
Speaker 3: out of the chain. You're not only cut out of
Speaker 3: the chain, but you are still on the financial hook
Speaker 3: for all those loans you took out at the beginning. Right,
Speaker 3: the bank that gave you money is not going to say, ah,
Speaker 3: you had a conscience, you know what I mean, So
Speaker 3: we're going to forgive this loan. They're going to say, hey,
Speaker 3: you're late this month, and that will be the extent
Speaker 3: of their empathy or observation. Also you know, there are
Speaker 3: harmful impacts on the local community. I was interested to
Speaker 3: learn and we found this in previous research on livestock overall.
Speaker 3: But you guys might remember back in two thousand and
Speaker 3: nine a criminologist studied locations of poultry processing outfits and
Speaker 3: crimes rate of crime. Similar studies have been conducted with
Speaker 3: the location of military bases and crime. And what this criminologist,
Speaker 3: Damie Fitzgerald, found was that slaughterhouse employment, regardless of the
Speaker 3: animal involved or being processed, slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates,
Speaker 3: violent crime, arrest arrest for sexual assault and other sex
Speaker 3: offenses in comparison to other indists.
Speaker 4: And this is what like pointing to just the potential
Speaker 4: for this being such a traumatic situation to work in
Speaker 4: that you would maybe I don't know, be damaged psychologically
Speaker 4: by that, or that certain types of people that might
Speaker 4: be violent offenders are more attracted to this kind of work.
Speaker 5: I'm curious. It's a very interesting step.
Speaker 3: Those are great questions in Fitzgerald's work. What we see
Speaker 3: is not a not a ton of conclusions past the correlation,
Speaker 3: but some of the possibilities that were just mentioned there.
Speaker 3: The idea that maybe folks who wouldn't pass a background
Speaker 3: check for another job are getting hired. Maybe that's one. Maybe,
Speaker 3: you know, there have also been some interesting studies that
Speaker 3: we have in cited here regarding the psychological effects. You mentioned.
Speaker 3: It's very that's a very real thing as well. But
Speaker 3: what we're bringing this up for is to show that
Speaker 3: there does appear to be a discernible impact on the
Speaker 3: social environment in which these operations exist. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a nice segue to the larger environmental impact the
Speaker 3: overall what happens to the land, the air, the sea,
Speaker 3: the you know, how much arsenic are you getting, guys,
Speaker 3: are you getting enough arsenalup?
Speaker 2: So? Oh man, And really quickly before we hit on that,
Speaker 2: I just want to talk about the reason why there
Speaker 2: were there are so many poultry farmers out there in
Speaker 2: the world, especially in the United States. And before we
Speaker 2: jump in, let's just talk about why there are so
Speaker 2: many poultry farmers out there, why there's so much chicken,
Speaker 2: specifically chicken for meat being produced in the United States. Specifically,
Speaker 2: it is because it takes eighteen to twenty four months
Speaker 2: to raise a cow for meat. It takes six to
Speaker 2: twelve weeks to raise an entire flock of chickens, like
Speaker 2: a chicken house filled with chickens six to twelve weeks.
Speaker 2: And the reason why farmers are going towards chickens is
Speaker 2: because with some of these contracts that they signed that
Speaker 2: we talked about in the beginning, like with the big
Speaker 2: with the big producers that then get contracts to raise chickens,
Speaker 2: as well as independent chicken raisers who kind of do
Speaker 2: their own thing and then sell their own chicken via
Speaker 2: small farm. Is because you can get paid, let's say
Speaker 2: every twelve weeks if you raise flocks of chicken in
Speaker 2: that way, if you've got four chicken houses that you're
Speaker 2: raising at the same time or maybe in tandem, right,
Speaker 2: you're getting paid pretty consistently. If you're raising a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of cows, it takes you twenty four months potentially
Speaker 2: to get paid, right, But because then you're selling your
Speaker 2: product at the end period. It's the reason why farmers
Speaker 2: are moving towards poultry on huge rates because you're actually
Speaker 2: gonna have money coming into the farm consistently, rather than
Speaker 2: hoping that you're gonna have enough money to pay off
Speaker 2: all those loans and then pay for your life and
Speaker 2: your family and all that other stuff.
Speaker 3: Predictable profit on a shorter time window or a shorter
Speaker 3: distance between intervals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that makes sense to all of us.
Speaker 2: But it also means that there are so many chickens
Speaker 2: being produced for these purposes and in these ways. It
Speaker 2: is having this environmental impact and this societal impact that
Speaker 2: we just maybe as a species, didn't expect to be
Speaker 2: as large for sure.
Speaker 4: So let's go into some more environmental consequences.
Speaker 5: You mentioned arsenic earlier.
Speaker 4: Ben Arsnic in case you need a refresher, is a
Speaker 4: metallic mineral that's released into soil and water when fertilizers
Speaker 4: and pesticides are used. Organic farms are less toxic than
Speaker 4: the inorganic stuff, but still they are not non toxic
Speaker 4: after a certain threshold.
Speaker 5: None of this stuff is particularly good for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Arsenic was originally put into large scale chicken feed
Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties for three reasons. It was supposed
Speaker 3: to help fight disease, it was supposed to improve muscle growth,
Speaker 3: and it was also this is a weird one to me,
Speaker 3: it was supposed to make the meat pinker, So it
Speaker 3: was an esthetic agent.
Speaker 4: And guys, we are talking about the same arsenic like
Speaker 4: the King of Poison, Right, it is the same. It's
Speaker 4: just about the concentration. So no matter how you shake it,
Speaker 4: this stuff is a historically effective poison, you know, from
Speaker 4: like Agatha Christie novels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dory, our friends at the National Chicken Council have
Speaker 3: a statement where they see there's no need to worry.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no direct correlation between long term detrimental
Speaker 3: health effects like cancer head to arsenic. But it is
Speaker 3: also true that for a long time, consumption of chicken
Speaker 3: was the primary source of arsenic exposure in US children across.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. It's almost like they eat a bunch of
Speaker 2: chicken products.
Speaker 4: Chicken, the fingers nuggets, you know, part of school lunch programs.
Speaker 3: I think it was smart to call them tenders too.
Speaker 3: That was great marketing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they don't like people don't say.
Speaker 4: Fingers is much more specialized the term these days. It
Speaker 4: seems like it's not used as broadly because it is
Speaker 4: kind of odd.
Speaker 5: Because you know, chicken don't really have fingers.
Speaker 3: It's like lady fingers. Yeah, chicken fingers is calm. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So along with arsenic and specific there are other concerns
Speaker 3: about substances excreted by the industry or related we mentioned.
Speaker 3: We'll mentioned some of the issues that chickens themselves face.
Speaker 3: There's a thing called ammonia burn because when there are
Speaker 3: large accumulations of feces, there is this creation of ammonia.
Speaker 3: Right it's concentrated, it has to go somewhere. As a result,
Speaker 3: a lot of chickens get respiratory diseases. They get this
Speaker 3: thing called ammonia burn, and it's not exclusive to chickens.
Speaker 3: Twenty sixteen, MPR went to North Carolina, one of the
Speaker 3: country's largest poultry producing states. At What they found was
Speaker 3: people who are locals. As this industry continues to explode
Speaker 3: the area, they're starting to at least they're starting to
Speaker 3: think they are experiencing ammonia burn because of a weird,
Speaker 3: unwanted combo of dead birds, leftover feed and feed waste
Speaker 3: and then manure. It all mixes, right, and sometimes they're
Speaker 3: just mass graves that have a stink cloud coming off them,
Speaker 3: like the wavy lines in a cartoon or evil fingers
Speaker 3: you around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really bad. There was a Tyson plant right
Speaker 2: near where I grew up, and the smell just from
Speaker 2: the plant, the processing plant so this isn't even the
Speaker 2: growing chickens part that we're talking about with mostly like
Speaker 2: feces runoff and all the nastiness that's been discussed, the
Speaker 2: smell from a plant of blood yep, and this just death,
Speaker 2: oh god. And it's the innards. Remember we're talking about
Speaker 2: the evisceration part where all that stuff goes. You might
Speaker 2: save the livers and the gizzards and a couple other
Speaker 2: little things for specialty food products, but most of it
Speaker 2: is just trash. And when it becomes that waste thing,
Speaker 2: where it goes afterwards and how it stored can affect
Speaker 2: everybody in And.
Speaker 4: There's a big Tyson plant near Athens, Georgia, where I
Speaker 4: lived for quite a while, and you know when you
Speaker 4: got in that vicinity of that place, it was pretty rough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And you can smell some of these from
Speaker 3: the highway, yeah, the road as you're driving through. There
Speaker 3: are a couple of I think we've all in the
Speaker 3: Southeast in particular, had those experiences. There are a couple
Speaker 3: of times I was able to time my drive to
Speaker 3: a few places by when the spell kicked in.
Speaker 2: You like to get away from it, to.
Speaker 3: Get away, or when it arrives like switch when is
Speaker 3: it time to switch off the outside vents?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and you can feel it coming, you can
Speaker 3: hear it.
Speaker 2: But I remember hearing about this specifically when we were
Speaker 2: when we covered Dark Waters. I think we mentioned not
Speaker 2: that long ago in the show that we just published
Speaker 2: it as a classic where there were issues with water
Speaker 2: runoff and chemical plants. The other issue that came up
Speaker 2: was water runoff with chicken feces specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, it's one hundred percent true. I mean, the
Speaker 3: critics will argue that, let's step back. So proponents, a
Speaker 3: lot of people higher up in the industry will argue, look,
Speaker 3: we comply with regulations as they stand, and we're helping
Speaker 3: a lot of people because we are an enormous economic
Speaker 3: powerhouse whenever we cluck through town. But the critics on
Speaker 3: the other side will say, yeah, you're quote unquote complying
Speaker 3: with regulations that you physically hampered. Right, you change the
Speaker 3: rules of the road to your advantage at the consequence
Speaker 3: of the public, and of course these cursed birds.
Speaker 4: And now it seems like, I mean, even under the
Speaker 4: best circumstances, these regulations are fallible and not nearly robust. Enough,
Speaker 4: and it does seem like, given the nature of the
Speaker 4: governmental situation that we find ourselves in the United States,
Speaker 4: we may see further erosion of these types of regulations
Speaker 4: for the benefit of the yield, you know, for the
Speaker 4: benefit of the companies producing the stuff and profiting from
Speaker 4: this stuff, rather than then for the safety of the
Speaker 4: end user.
Speaker 3: I'm glad that was said, because that's happening now. That
Speaker 3: is true. The relatively defanged regulations that already exist on
Speaker 3: federal and state by state levels are being further debaked,
Speaker 3: you could say, because they are already standing exemptions from
Speaker 3: state odor ordinances, especially in big poultry towns or excuse me,
Speaker 3: poultry states. And then there are also exemptions from federal
Speaker 3: air emissions monitoring. So the rules are already put at
Speaker 3: like the video game difficulty setting is at easy right now,
Speaker 3: it's at laughably easy for compliance, and that means that
Speaker 3: this stuff gets into the air, into the soil, leaches
Speaker 3: into the water. And the argument from the industry, again,
Speaker 3: to be fair, has always been something along the lines
Speaker 3: of in our broiler chicken friends say this too. It's
Speaker 3: something like, if you overregulate this industry, you're going to
Speaker 3: damage it. You're going to have very dangerous economic impacts,
Speaker 3: but you're also not going to produce much in the
Speaker 3: way of favorable results. You will have a lot of
Speaker 3: sound and fury signifying nothing. That's an argument critics reject,
Speaker 3: but it is the one the Feds and big companies
Speaker 3: do seem to embrace. Not putting a not putting a
Speaker 3: chicken in the kill cone of this one. We're just
Speaker 3: letting you know the two different sides of the spectrum here,
Speaker 3: and I don't know. The other thing to get more conspiratorial,
Speaker 3: we're duty bound to say this is that other stuff
Speaker 3: added in the production line may hold even more dire
Speaker 3: consequences down the road. Diarer the dire risks die.
Speaker 5: Die die.
Speaker 4: The operative word here are we talking about antibiotics and
Speaker 4: that feed loop sure feedback loom created by feeding the
Speaker 4: chickens their ground up cohorts.
Speaker 5: Right? Not great?
Speaker 4: Oh, in terms of the kinds of superbugs that this
Speaker 4: can create.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, the antibiotics have to be included in some
Speaker 3: level for some of these large scale operations, you know,
Speaker 3: facilitation of rapid weight gait, cutting down on the diseases
Speaker 3: that would otherwise run rampant in those conditions. This widespread
Speaker 3: use of antibiotics mentioned the word superbug there and all.
Speaker 3: This widespread use of antibiotics is essentially fast tracking the
Speaker 3: evolution of superbugs of drug resistant things. It's reducing the
Speaker 3: overall effectiveness in antibiotics in humans. And this is an
Speaker 3: across the board effect. This is across the board catastrophic potential.
Speaker 3: If you are vegan, if you are vegetarian, a super
Speaker 3: bug generated by this overtreatment of antibiotics can still affect you.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what you eat.
Speaker 2: It does matter if the antibiotics actually get into you, right,
Speaker 2: And the National Chicken Council says no, they will never
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 4: But you know, and y'all, I know, I keep harping
Speaker 4: on this idea of like feeding the chickens ground up chicken,
Speaker 4: and I guess the issue there can be their self
Speaker 4: contaminating and then the antibiotics, I don't know, like they
Speaker 4: can become less effective or there is something that I've
Speaker 4: definitely seen reported on in terms of that feedback loop
Speaker 4: of the whole system, the close system of it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So these bugs that we're describing, these infections, their
Speaker 3: generational time window is much shorter than that of a
Speaker 3: larger organism. So when you can continually expose them to antibiotics,
Speaker 3: that would have, you know, would have been an existential
Speaker 3: threat over time. With a lot of antibiotics hitting these
Speaker 3: things again and again, we are, as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: we're fast tracking the revolution. This is not a theoretical matter.
Speaker 3: This will lead to the creation of superbugs unless there
Speaker 3: are discoveries of new, increasingly powerful antibiotics. There is an
Speaker 3: arms race against infection.
Speaker 2: And that is specifically talking about the types of bacteria
Speaker 2: and things like salmonella, things that you hear about with
Speaker 2: an outbreak with like a chicken crop or an egg
Speaker 2: crop or something like that that is not tied to
Speaker 2: or to at least not directly tied to avian flu
Speaker 2: and things like that that we're going to get into.
Speaker 2: That's a whole other bag of badgers on top of this.
Speaker 2: One has to do with the potential biological contamination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this realization or growing awareness in the public
Speaker 3: ed to a series of without the three of us
Speaker 3: sounding dish, it led to a series of feel good
Speaker 3: statements by a lot of end user chicken companies and
Speaker 3: chicken joints. Tyson KFC, our own Chick fil A. A
Speaker 3: lot of these outfits said, all right, no antibiotics ever.
Speaker 3: We're not going to do it. We've heard you the people.
Speaker 3: We'd love to sell you a combo number three, and
Speaker 3: we want you to feel safe buying it. They later
Speaker 3: backtracked their promises and they modified to these more nuanced stances,
Speaker 3: the same way that Google no longer says, don't be evil.
Speaker 3: Tyson used to have no antibiotics ever on the label.
Speaker 3: That's removed. If you see that, now you're buying expired chicken.
Speaker 3: Just so you know, pro tip from the boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we talked about this on I think Strange News.
Speaker 2: Maybe one of the big problems was these major chicken users,
Speaker 2: the companies that actually give you an end product of chicken,
Speaker 2: like your KFC's and Chick fil A's, they realized, at
Speaker 2: least the ones in the UK, they realized they could
Speaker 2: not source enough chicken to meet demand that could meet
Speaker 2: those standards that they were theoretically striving for, right.
Speaker 3: And the producers themselves could not afford to make to
Speaker 3: create chickens at that level that the restaurants were looking for.
Speaker 3: So it was it was a weird discrepancy, weird misstep
Speaker 3: Chick fil A also switched the game to something I've
Speaker 3: referenced a couple times here. They switched the game to
Speaker 3: no antibiotics important to human medicine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, that's interesting. But so does that
Speaker 2: just mean they're not using antibiotics that you might get
Speaker 2: prescribed if you go to the doctor.
Speaker 4: Because that would be a bad thing if those particular
Speaker 4: ones were weakened or our immune systems no longer responded
Speaker 4: to them.
Speaker 5: Is that the idea of what they're claiming.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a bug. It would be better the buzz
Speaker 2: knew about the medicine you were going to take.
Speaker 3: Also too, it's there's there's a lot of room for
Speaker 3: cognitive parkour in the phrase important to absolute human medic a. Yeah,
Speaker 3: how does truet Kathy feel today? He feels very dead.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's a shame, but he is. He has passed. Uh.
Speaker 3: This so that is its own uh. As said earlier,
Speaker 3: Bag of Badgers Avian flew. Other diseases are different and
Speaker 3: are perhaps even larger threats, depending upon whom you ask.
Speaker 3: So chickens and turkeys, when they get killed, they're usually
Speaker 3: not able to walk that well, they're sick, they're in pain.
Speaker 3: They're often infected with things like E. Coli or as
Speaker 3: earlier mentioned, salmonella, other bacteria that can make human being sick.
Speaker 3: And since poultry products are, oh, by the way, the
Speaker 3: main source of food borne illness in people, I was
Speaker 3: not aware of that these chickens have to get soaked
Speaker 3: with these toxic chemicals mentioned earlier that some remnant of
Speaker 3: those chemicals is consumed along with the flesh. This all like,
Speaker 3: this is all hitting very weak immune systems in the
Speaker 3: individual bird, and that means we're creating fertile soil for
Speaker 3: a possible zoonotic version of av and influenza. It's a
Speaker 3: global concern. As we're recording, South Africa is currently anticipating
Speaker 3: another outbreak. They're not saying it might happen. They're saying,
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of like what is it tornado
Speaker 3: watch versus tornado warning. They're not saying the conditions are favorable.
Speaker 3: They're saying strap in folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's avian flu that has made.
Speaker 3: The jump right to become zoonotic.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right now in the United States, at least specifically, all
Speaker 2: of these producers are worried about avian flu in the
Speaker 2: chickens and in the flocks themselves. That hasn't jumped to
Speaker 2: humans yet, but good golly, it seems like it might
Speaker 2: happen in any day now the way it is happening
Speaker 2: in South Africa, because we've got a specialized version called
Speaker 2: highly pathogenic avian influenza, and it is taken out flocks,
Speaker 2: especially egg laying flocks, left and right and right now.
Speaker 2: There's a billion dollars that's getting pumped in through the
Speaker 2: USDA to fix all these things. And guys, I want
Speaker 2: to talk about this because it feels really similar to
Speaker 2: is what happened with SARS Cove two with the USDA
Speaker 2: is attempting to get what they're injecting one hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars into government grants to create a new vaccine for
Speaker 2: the chickens, like specifically to vaccinate all the chickens. Guys
Speaker 2: like that, that is crazy. I mean, I mean, it
Speaker 2: makes sense, I guess, but I don't know. Something about
Speaker 2: it weirds me out, and I, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 3: Look at I think our next step is to agreed
Speaker 3: it is a worrisome thing. Our next step is to
Speaker 3: look at Congress members overall and see what they're investing in.
Speaker 2: Hmm, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of people made money off antibacterial wipes
Speaker 3: and toilet paper and co vaccine companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. Look into the Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rawlins,
Speaker 2: because this was a big announcement that came at the
Speaker 2: end of February this year, and it is all about
Speaker 2: trying to fix egg prices. It's like a five pronged
Speaker 2: approach to fix egg prices in America. But all of it,
Speaker 2: all of it goes back to avian influenza if you
Speaker 2: really look at it, and the billion dollars, most of
Speaker 2: it goes to helping out farmers who are basically, you know,
Speaker 2: had their livelihoods cut in half or more because of
Speaker 2: this single virus.
Speaker 3: The United Nations clocked this possibility too. In their official
Speaker 3: statement a while back. They said governments, local authorities and
Speaker 3: international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in
Speaker 3: combating the role of factory farming a little redundant. But
Speaker 3: they have, you know, other stuff to do. They said,
Speaker 3: commerce and live poultry and wildlife markets, which provide ideal
Speaker 3: conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a
Speaker 3: more dangerous form. I mean not for nothing did Stephen
Speaker 3: King pick influenzas as the big bad of the stand.
Speaker 3: Its mutation is unpredictable. Its mutation is continual, and it
Speaker 3: moves at a pretty quick pace.
Speaker 2: And there's plenty of chickens for it to move through, right,
Speaker 2: It's got.
Speaker 3: A lot of practice, it's got a lot of different
Speaker 3: fields to play a game.
Speaker 2: On and have a little tiny jump in its evolution,
Speaker 2: and then we got something wholly different. Worries me a
Speaker 2: little bit in this legislation that came through. One of
Speaker 2: the things that the USDA is talking about doing in
Speaker 2: this five promonged approach is to remove unnecessary regulatory burdens
Speaker 2: on the chicken and egg industry to further innovation and
Speaker 2: reduce consumer prices.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the consumer prices are definitely what they're concerned about.
Speaker 2: But like theoretically, just thinking on that a bit, when
Speaker 2: we think about when people go to the grocery store, now,
Speaker 2: you buy what you can afford, right, and if you
Speaker 2: can afford a little more, you are likely going to
Speaker 2: choose one of those labels like the USDA Certified Organic.
Speaker 2: That means, you know, the chicken has bypassed a lot
Speaker 2: of the horrific stuff, not all of it, but a
Speaker 2: lot of the horrific stuff that we described in this episode.
Speaker 2: So you use your money to purchase a chicken that
Speaker 2: actually is roaming around somewhere, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Kind of also not a thing as much in other countries,
Speaker 4: like you don't need to pay extra for the safer food.
Speaker 4: Like I feel like that's definitely the case where it's
Speaker 4: just chicken, his chicken, and you don't have to like
Speaker 4: pay a premium to get the one that probably won't
Speaker 4: kill you or make it right.
Speaker 3: You're also looking at higher food safety standards, but then
Speaker 3: you're also looking at local producers, right, So that is
Speaker 3: part of it, the idea of returning to a less
Speaker 3: centralized supply chain. The issue is what this legislation ignores,
Speaker 3: which I mentioned before there is it ignores the fact
Speaker 3: that there is such tremendous financial pressure being put upon
Speaker 3: the further erosion of existing regulations, and the idea that
Speaker 3: the market itself will suddenly prioritize health and safety, which
Speaker 3: is simply it's never been the case and at least
Speaker 3: not the US. Nepton Sinclair was a percent right, there's
Speaker 3: a reason that we mentioned them. So often yep, yep.
Speaker 2: Just something I never learned till we did this episode. Guys,
Speaker 2: it costs an individual farmer somewhere around two thousand, three
Speaker 2: thousand dollars to get your even if it's a small farm,
Speaker 2: to get everything certified organic. And it's because you have
Speaker 2: to pay one of the roughly eighty certifiers, like literally
Speaker 2: individual eighty human beings that can certify your farm kickbacks organic. Well,
Speaker 2: you have to. You have to pay for them to
Speaker 2: fly from wherever they are, say for a couple.
Speaker 3: Of days, gaining per diem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you have to do that as a farmer, right.
Speaker 2: That's not the USDA doing it or some other It's.
Speaker 3: Not Tyson doing it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, crooking.
Speaker 3: It's a program you can enter in as a contract farmer.
Speaker 3: This is so what will this all lead to? Time
Speaker 3: will tell? The clock is ticking? Is the cock crow
Speaker 3: of disaster on the way? You know, I said the
Speaker 3: line earlier. I just love it. What rough Avian flu
Speaker 3: slouches toward Bethlehem to be bored. What's the end results.
Speaker 3: I think we've been very fair in this episode, or
Speaker 3: we've endeavored to be fair, giving chicken fans and foes alike,
Speaker 3: just an understanding of the issues involved.
Speaker 5: I mean, I love chicken. I eat plenty of chicken.
Speaker 4: I really enjoy making, you know, slicing it up and
Speaker 4: grilling it, putting it on salad, whatever. I know all
Speaker 4: this stuff, and have known all this stuff before even
Speaker 4: doing this deeper dive here, and I'm still so removed
Speaker 4: from all of that that it doesn't affect my purchasing
Speaker 4: and consuming habits that much. And I know that's the
Speaker 4: case for a lot of folks. And I want to
Speaker 4: do better, you know. I mean, it's every time we
Speaker 4: get into this kind of stuff, it makes me want
Speaker 4: to change the way I act as a consumer. But
Speaker 4: it's so easy to just kind of like turn a
Speaker 4: blind eye to a lot of this stuff, where at
Speaker 4: least like willfully deceive yourself about what's going on.
Speaker 3: It's also easy to feel that one is attempting to
Speaker 3: empty the ocean with a bucket, you know, Like, what
Speaker 3: difference can an individual make? We'd love to hear from
Speaker 3: people in the industry in particular, you know, what does
Speaker 3: the public need to know if you're directly connected to this,
Speaker 3: what are are the potential dangers? In your opinion, overstated.
Speaker 3: Are they perhaps underestimated? It'd be great to hear from anyone.
Speaker 3: Do we have anything we want to add before we
Speaker 3: close tonight's episode. I've got one.
Speaker 5: Thing Mary talked about, Rick Ross.
Speaker 2: What are the lives of the chickens you raise?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: For real?
Speaker 2: Because we have often heard the horror stories of the
Speaker 2: factory farming. What are your chickens lives like?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And have you met a villainous chicken? I really
Speaker 3: want to hear about this because I only ran into
Speaker 3: two over a long career of meeting various animals and.
Speaker 2: Were or like hens heads.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, it was crazy man anyway, So you can
Speaker 3: always always email us for that. The very last note
Speaker 3: here is that if you find yourself in our fair
Speaker 3: metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, the best chicken wings in town
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Speaker 3: check your chicken scratch to us on the internet.
Speaker 4: And pepper wet y'all try it at the local rules
Speaker 4: check us out. Sun very good also good excellent choice, Matt.
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