2016 has been a busy year in the poultry industry. Here are the top five poultry blog posts for the year from WattAgNet.com.
What happens to pardoned turkeys after Thanksgiving?
Ever since President George H.W. Bush announced that he would “pardon” the Thanksgiving turkey in 1989, presidential turkey pardons have become the custom. But have you ever wondered what happens to the turkey once it is pardoned?
Four-legged chicken attracts interest in China
To eat or not to eat, that is the question -- and perhaps how many people to invite for dinner. These and, no doubt, numerous other questions must have been going through the head of the Chinese poultry farmer who discovered a four-legged chicken on his farm.
Will Wal-Mart egg decision have far-reaching effects?
Because we live in an interconnected world, what happens "over there" will more than likely eventually happen "over here," wherever you may be, and regardless of whether you like it. For example, take the overdue upsurge in concern over antibiotic resistance in the U.S., and the subsequent renewed focus in Europe, despite the latter having banned in-feed antibiotic growth promoters from January 1, 2006 and subsequently following an ever-stricter judicious use policy. Who is leading whom in this case is not clear, but there’s certainly a connection.
Matt Damon’s chicken-only diet
There’s something that tends to make me nervous whenever I see news concerning celebrities and the consumption of chicken. So when I saw a recent First We Feast report about when actor Matt Damon went on a diet that consisted only of chicken breast meat, I wondered what kind of criticism the poultry industry would be getting.
Slow-growing broilers provide welfare goals for growers
Purposely selecting a breed of chickens because it grows slower seems like the least economically “sustainable” business model that I can imagine. But, with the interest Whole Foods has shown in slow-growing chickens here in the U.S. and the successful niche markets for these birds in France, the Netherlands and the U.K, I was really curious about what Claude Toudic with Hubbard France could tell us about these strains of chickens and the market for them in the Europe.