New “humane” chicken standards impact cost, environment

The National Chicken Council says shifting to new production standards for broiler chickens will be costly to both the industry and consumers. Spokesman Tom Super says calls for slower-growing strains of chickens and fewer birds per barn will increase the cost of production.  He says, “Our research has shown that switching to these slower-growing standards would increase the cost of production almost a half-a-million dollars per chicken house, and considering there are about 64-thousand chicken houses currently in the U.S. and even if, say a third switched to these new standards, that’s still 20-thousand houses that are incurring half-a-million dollars more per year to produce less chicken.” Read More