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United States Science

Fast-Growth Chickens Produce New Industry Woe: 'Spaghetti Meat' (wsj.com) 175

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chicken companies spent decades breeding birds to grow rapidly and develop large breast muscles. Now the industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the consequences ranging from squishy fillets known as "spaghetti meat," because they pull apart easily, to leathery ones known as "woody breast." [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] The abnormalities pose no food safety risk, researchers and industry officials say. They are suspected side effects of genetic selection that now allows meat companies to raise a 6.3-pound bird in 47 days, roughly twice as fast as 50 years ago, according to the National Chicken Council.

That efficiency drive has helped U.S. meat giants such as Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms produce a record 42 billion pounds of chicken nuggets, tenders and other products in 2018. Now, it's adding an estimated $200 million or more in annual industry expenses to identify and divert breast fillets that are too tough, too squishy or too striped with bands of white tissue to sell in restaurants or grocery stores, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas.
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Fast-Growth Chickens Produce New Industry Woe: 'Spaghetti Meat' More

Fast-Growth Chickens Produce New Industry Woe: 'Spaghetti Meat'

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  • Maybe lab grown chicken is best... (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:54PM (#58263538)

    It's funny, I'm not keen on lab grown beef, but I'd probably go for lab grown chicken... maybe it's because it would be essentially what we have now, without the suffering of millions of chickens raised in really poor conditions.

    Also because it appears lab grown chicken has a much lower bar to meet commercial chicken quality as the summary illuminates.

    • Re:Maybe lab grown chicken is best... (Score:4, Funny)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:14PM (#58263740)

      without the suffering of millions of chickens raised in really poor conditions.

      Yes! Forget about "Think of the Children!" . . . "Think of the Chickens!"

      I think all IT folks should rally around the cause:

      Spaghetti Code! Not Chicken!"

      • Yes! Forget about "Think of the Children!" . . . "Think of the Chickens!"

        No, think about the chicken children!

        These youngsters, they grow up so fast these days, don't they?

    • without the suffering of millions of chickens raised in really poor conditions.

      To be fair, the conditions for meat chickens, while awful, is not as bad as the battery cages used for egg layers.

      Disclaimer: I keep my own chickens in my backyard. It is a fun hobby, and the eggs taste way better than store bought.

      • Fresh eggs from local hens taste remarkably better than mass-grown ones. I wish I had the room and time to keep hens, ducks, and quail.

        (Also, the alternative link in the summary is bologna.)

        • Best part of any visit home is rolling out of bed late, wandering down for a cup of extra-strong coffee, and mom making me a couple of runny eggs and some buttery wheat toast to dunk in them. Those amazing nearly orange yolks are just so good.

          I try not to think about the fucking dinosaurs who made them, however. One running around with a live mouse in its beak, with the rest of the flock chasing after it trying to get a piece as well. The flock going crazy over a snake and pecking and kicking it to death, t

        • Meh - my parents keep chickens and honestly - I can't tell one bit of difference between their local ones and grocery store ones.

      • To be fair, the conditions for meat chickens, while awful, is not as bad as the battery cages used for egg layers.
        Disclaimer: I keep my own chickens in my backyard. It is a fun hobby, and the eggs taste way better than store bought.

        But . . . doesen't beef have these same problems as the chickens ?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The problem with raising your own chickens for meat is you have to kill them yourself (or have someone do it for you). I'm certainly not opposed to it, and would do it if I had to, but most people today wouldn't have the stomach for it. Beyond that, there's all the mess involved. I'd rather just pay a bit extra for the hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free-range local hippy farm meat.

  • editors lol (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:56PM (#58263556)
    your alternative source is literally just an article about spaghetti, you dinks.

  • Their customers will eat anything.

    • Their customers will eat anything.

      Close, but the truth is Arby's customers will eat anything that has Arby's cheese sauce on it.

      Even though it makes me feel slightly odd, who can resist its moist pleasures?

    • Better yet, market it in Tokyo. They can serve it coffee shops... on a hotdog bun topped with whipped cream and tangerine slices.

  • REAL Alternative Source (Score:5, Informative)

    by Blue Stone ( 582566 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:59PM (#58263590) Homepage Journal

    Because the Slashdot editors are such stellar professionals and the "alternative source" to the paywalled site goes to an article on actual fucking spaghetti (with no connection to the main story at all) (ffs), here's the main article's text:

    Fast-Growth Chickens Produce New Industry Woe: ‘Spaghetti Meat’
    Jacob Bunge March 10, 2019

    Chicken companies spent decades breeding birds to grow rapidly and develop large breast muscles. Now the industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the consequences ranging from squishy fillets known as “spaghetti meat,” because they pull apart easily, to leathery ones known as “woody breast.”

    The abnormalities pose no food safety risk, researchers and industry officials say. They are suspected side effects of genetic selection that now allows meat companies to raise a 6.3-pound bird in 47 days, roughly twice as fast as 50 years ago, according to the National Chicken Council.

    That efficiency drive has helped U.S. meat giants such as Tyson Foods Inc., Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. , Perdue Farms Inc. and Sanderson Farms Inc. produce a record 42 billion pounds of chicken nuggets, tenders and other products in 2018. Now, it’s adding an estimated $200 million or more in annual industry expenses to identify and divert breast fillets that are too tough, too squishy or too striped with bands of white tissue to sell in restaurants or grocery stores, according to researchers at the University of Arkansas.

    “There is proof that these abnormalities are associated with fast-growing birds,” said Dr. Massimiliano Petracci, a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy, who leads a team of researchers investigating the chicken breast problems in breeds used in commercial farms.

    Two poultry-breeding firms—Cobb-Vantress, owned by Tyson, and Aviagen Inc.—supply the bulk of breeding stock for the world’s chicken companies, industry officials said. Years of matching up genetic lines has boosted each bird’s yield of breast muscle, the white meat that sells for a roughly 13% premium to overall wholesale chicken meat prices, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.

    Researchers and breeders are still trying to pin down the exact cause of problems, a Tyson spokesman said. “While there are some factors linked to the occurrence—including bird weight, feed ingredients and the time of year the bird is grown—even a combination of these factors will not necessarily produce the same issues consistently,” he said.

    An Aviagen spokeswoman had no comment.

    Spaghetti meat—a name researchers have given chicken breast fillets that can be picked up and pulled apart by hand, or punctured easily with a fingertip—began appearing in 2015 and now can be detected in around 4% to 5% of breast meat samples, researchers said.

    “It looks like spaghetti noodles,” said Dr. Casey Owens, a University of Arkansas professor, adding that the affected muscle fibers have a stringy texture.

    Researchers also began observing white striping in commercially raised chickens around 2010, with woody breast appearing on the scene around 2013, Dr. Petracci said. Woody breast has been found in around 10% of samples, while white striping occurs in around 30% of chicken breasts sampled, he said. The severity of the problems can vary widely and often doesn’t affect the entire breast, researchers said.

    Meat scientists said they suspect the rapid growth rate of commercially raised chickens may lead breast muscle tissue to outgrow the oxygen supply provided by chickens’ developing circulatory systems, at which point muscle fibers can degrade. That can alter the density and texture of the meat, they said.

    Some restaurant and grocery companies aren’t waiting for chicken companies to solve the problems. Burger chain Wendy’s Co. in 2016 noticed toughness in some of its grilled chicken sandwiches. The chain in 2017

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:10PM (#58263706)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Honestly, the only sort of chicken you should eat is the organic sort. Failing that, 'free range', corn-fed. Otherwise, you're getting some bastardised version of chicken. All but the most clueless can taste the difference too.

      Look no further than the eggs - if your pack of half a dozen all look about the same, and all crack easily and consistently, then you've got the wrong sort.

      I realise that this fast-grown bastardised stuff mostly ends up in 'fast food' rather than the supermarkets, so remember that nex

  • Woody breast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brianerst ( 549609 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:17PM (#58263756) Homepage

    I first noticed what is now called "woody breast" about 7 years ago, but about 2 years ago it got some prevalent that I stopped eating chicken for a while. I eventually found a local farm producer that raises their chickens humanely and doesn't use the super-growing varieties. The cost is not significantly more than factory farmed chicken, it's better for the birds and the quality is night and day better. Plus, they butcher the birds to order - you can get backs and necks for stock for pennies and those birds were happily pecking away earlier that morning.

    I listened to a podcast and did a little research on the subject and they're really stumped. The problem is that it's not unique to the fast-growing breeds - it occurs fairly regularly in the original stock too, so doing some cross-breeding to clear out the problem won't work. They have some new gizmo that can detect woody breast without contact (some difference in conductivity of sound?), which they're looking to bring online while they search for the genetic, environmental or husbandry basis of the condition. Right now, they have the processors feel the meat and redirect anything that feels hinky to the chicken nugget stream. (Apparently, the meat itself is fine, and the textural differences are obliterated by grinding.)

    I suspect that there is some genetic component that has now become concentrated in the breed stock, because there is way more of it today than even a few years ago. Thank god for my local farmer!

    • I eventually found a local farm producer that raises their chickens humanely and doesn't use the super-growing varieties. The cost is not significantly more than factory farmed chicken, it's better for the birds and the quality is night and day better.

      I totally agree, we get chickens from a local farmer and we noticed the chicken was a lot better than most packaged chicken. I haven't had commercial stuff for a while so I didn't know the quality had gone downhill...

      I don't know that everyone can find farm r

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      I suspect that there is some genetic component that has now become concentrated in the breed stock, because there is way more of it today than even a few years ago.

      Yes, we've known for some time now that the woodiest cocks are the most prolific breeders.

  • Why not try free-range chicken? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:29PM (#58263858)

    Chickens (and other poultry) raised out of doors and allowed to choose their own favourite foods are obviously healthier, happier - and provide far tastier, more healthy meat.

    The hideous fallacy of treating farming as an industry has caused an immense amount of unspeakable suffering for animals, while turning out unpleasant, tasteless meat that lacks vital nutrients - and may contain serious health hazards such as dangerous bacteria, viruses and antibiotics.

    More is not always better. Cheaper is rarely better. Making very rich people even richer is not the purpose of farming.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Free-range and wild animals can get something called rice breast [wikipedia.org]. While it's harmless (they're just cysts), it looks nasty [google.com] and is enough to make you lose your appetite. Usually it's only hunters who encounter it since they butcher the animals themselves. When it shows up in free-range chicken meat, the meat is probably ground up and redirected to other uses like pet food. Raising the chickens in enclosed pens (to avoid the parasites spreading from feces of birds flying overhead), and closely regulating t

    • The breed of chicken they are talking about here is basically useless for trying to raise outdoors. When I was a kid, decades ago, we raised one of the predecessor breeds to what's being used today. They put on eight pounds of meat in eight weeks. We tried raising them in a coop with a large fenced in area that they could move around in and scavenge for insects and seeds. What these little feathered piggies did was find the shortest path between the feed trough and the water, and only deviate from that when

  • TWO possible solutions here (Score:3)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:31PM (#58263874) Homepage
    1. Find a new marketing gimmick for the stringy chicken meat. Maybe it is for kids!

    2. Make fast growth chickens grow more slowly. Give them something that slows down growth to counteract the growth hormones. Then we can all enjoy two new drugs in our meat.

  • Woody breast describes my chicken (Score:3)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @06:03PM (#58264074)
    I keep getting recipes calling for 6-8 oz chicken breasts. All I can find in my local megamarts are 1+ lb chicken tits. These are hard to cook, I usually end up halving them horizontally, which makes them cook better, but they don't taste better. Frozen chicken tits are iffy as hell, you never know what you're getting when you buy a bag. I've tried smaller chains and still find either 1+ lb over-amped disasters, or bags of frozen whetevs.

    If you live in a city, where do you find your normal sized chicken boobs?

    That said, I much prefer thighs over breasts. They haven't been bred to ginormous sizes, are cheaper (people are stupid), and taste better than the boobies.

    • Look for Halal meats. Apparently the animals are hand-slaughtered so I assume they must be raised in smaller numbers and under somewhat better conditions than the factory hatcheries. I find they are smaller and I have yet to experience these texture issues. It's a little more expensive but my family and I find the meat is tastier and more pleasant to the palate. And yes, they are available at the larger grocery chains (here in Toronto you can find them in No Frills).

  • My wife and I raise chickens, but not that type.

    It sounds like they are talking about a particular four-way hybrid.

    Products of the final cross have an oversupply of anabolic steroids. They literally sit in front of a bowl of food and eat, building muscle and turning into a sedentary "Arnold Schwarzenegger" bird.

    Saw some at a county fair auction. Other chicken types were aware of their surroundings, often looking at other chickens, hunting for bugs, strutting around and showing off, etc. These sat in a row, looking bored, ignoring the crowd and other animals, and desultorily poking at the straw on the platform in front of them, looking for something they'd recognize as food.

    If you decide not to send them to slaughter it doesn't really matter much. They outgrow their circulatory systems and die shortly after market age.

    We know one chicken farmer who stopped raising these, after he noticed that at market age the were still making the little chick "peep peep" call.

  • The pork industry worked on a similar genetic problem not too long ago. Some of the fast growth lean pigs had a gene that caused PSA 'Pale Soft Exudative' meat when they were stressed before slaughter. A combination of genetics and better pre-slaughter handling has largely fixed it.

  • I am all for GMO, round-up, pesticides, whatever, but the taste of meat these days is f'in terrible. I started buying a particular brand of $7/lb chicken breasts because they are the only ones that are reliably not "woody" and actually have taste. Beef is going the same way. No amount of salt can actually give it flavor. Please bring back meat flavored meat!! Also, farmed indian/indonesia shrimp suck, farmed atlantic salmon isn't as good as it used to be, farmed tilapia sucks, most pork sucks because its

  • Upon seeing this at first I thought they just put the woody breasts in frozen microwave meals, then I realized there's no way that's breast meat.

    But nobody eats that garbage because it tastes good. I eat it because I'm lazy and I want my food in about 5 minutes. I don't think it matters what brand you buy. it's all the same chicken.

    I don't think I've had spaghetti chicken, but I'm intrigued.

  • I've been dreaming of having spaghetti meat noodles mixed evenly with the pasta noodles since my early childhood. Then you call this "spaghetti meat". Quite disappointed. Sorry child-me.... your dream did not come true today.

  • I'm already happy this is a thing that really exists.

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