FDA Okays Lab-Grown Chicken

The Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead to a lab-grown chicken product from GOOD Meat, and the company announced that chef José Andrés will serve it in one of his DC restaurants soon. But not so fast — the product has to be cleared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture first. GOOD Meat has been serving its lab-grown chicken in high-end Singapore restaurants since 2020.

This is the second synthetic chicken product cleared by the FDA. The first was from UPSIDE Foods back in November. There may be as many as 99 companies trying to develop cell-cultured meat. While the market for these food products is uncertain, this is a great time to be selling the bioreactors in which the stuff is “grown” and the nutrients that “feed” it.

More:

“A second lab-grown chicken producer got a step closer to hitting the shelves,” Julia Malleck, Quartz

“Lab-grown meat moves closer to American dinner plates,” By Leah Douglas, Reuters

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Chicken captured near secure Pentagon area

An avian intruder was nabbed near the Pentagon early Monday morning. The chicken was intercepted and captured by security forces. Defense Department officials denied the feathered interloper intended harm to Colonel Sanders, and called any links between Chicken Kiev and the Ukraine crisis pure speculation.

The furtive fowl was tentatively identified as a Rhode Island Red, but communist ties are not suspected. Predatory poultry has been increasingly responsible for rogue incidents of urban terrorism over the past decade, as growing numbers of likely recruits have roosted in backyards across America, and are egged on by bandit bird ringleaders.

More:

“Chicken captured near secure Pentagon area,” Martin Weil, Washington Post

“The Inside Story of Pentagon Chicken’s Capture,” Tori Bergel, Washingtonian

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Turkeys Fight Back!

By now you may have settled down into a post-Thanksgiving poultry-induced stupor, but watch out. In many parts of America, native wild turkeys are giving people a good basting. The meleagris gallopavo have come back from near-extinction, and now millions of the 4-foot-tall beasts are reclaiming their turf with a vengance:

“In New Hampshire a motorcyclist crashed after being assaulted. In New Jersey, a terrified postman rang 911 after a dozen members attacked at once. And in Michigan, one town armed public workers with pepper spray.

In September, the Daily Messenger in upstate New York had had enough and published a tongue-in-cheek call to arms: ‘We need to call out the militia, folks. This could be the greatest threat against humans and their civilization since Krakatau erupted. Wild turkey all over America are rioting, rising up in rebellion against the influx of people into their habitat.’”

— “How wild turkeys’ rough and rowdy ways are creating havoc in US cities,” Alice Hutton, The Guardian

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Why is chicken so cheap?

“Humans gobble so many chickens that the birds now count for 23 billion of the 30 billion land animals living on farms.”

A video by The Economist

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Turkey Terror Stalks the Suburbs

This afternoon, turkey will be a welcome guest in most American homes, but don’t be fooled. Alive and free-range, Meleagris gallopavo is a danger to life, limb, and giblets. The wild birds have cracked roof tiles in California, dangerously disrupted traffic in western New York, colonized Connecticut, battled Bridgewater, Massachusetts residents, loused up lawns in the Bay Area, and terrorized Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Wild turkeys are native to the U.S.A., so the Trump Administration won’t stop their suburban gang violence unless those great big Mexican wild turkeys take over. Note to Trump: los guajolotes grandes will just flutter over your wall.

Turkey Terror Stalks America’s Cities!

There’s a new gang terrorising the streets of Boston: Meleagris gallopavo. That’s right, wild turkeys are attacking people and vehicles, and the police do nothing. Thanks, Obama Trump!

Turkeys, Wild and Otherwise

There may or may not have been turkey at the first thanksgiving, but there will probably be one on your holiday table. Centuries before Columbus, the Aztecs domesticated wild turkeys, and Spanish conquerors took some birds home to Europe where they became popular, reaching England between 1524 and 1541. That means the New England “pilgrim” Puritans were as familiar with turkeys as their Wampanoag dinner guests, but neither would recognize the over-bred bird you bought this week.

A wild tom turkey usually weighs about 20 pounds and can fly for up to a mile with speed bursts up to 55 miles per hour. It’s dark-feathered, sly, slim, tall and long-legged, and can run like the devil through the brush. It can live up to 10 years if it doesn’t get an infection and can be found in any of the contiguous 48 states.

A domestic tom turkey can weigh up to 40 pounds, has white feathers, stumps around on short legs, and sports a huge breast. Most market turkeys come from Minnesota or North Carolina. A domestic turkey can’t fly or reproduce normally, is treated with antibiotics, and only lives for 2 or 3 months before it gets slaughtered for your dining pleasure. Happy Thanksgiving!

 More:

“Head To Head: Wild Vs. Supermarket Turkeys (Infographic),” World Science Festival

“Wild and domestic turkeys: birds of a different feather,” South Carolina Department of Natural Resources

“On This Thanksgiving, Celebrating The Wild Turkey,” Barbara J. King, NPR

Related:

“Look How Much Bigger Thanksgiving Turkeys Are Today Than in the 1930s,” Kiera Butler, Mother Jones 

“How Turkeys Got Broad, White Breasts,” Sara Bir, Modern Farmer

“How America’s Thanksgiving turkeys got so huge,” Svati Kirsten Narula, Quartz

“Benjamin Franklin praises the virtues of the turkey,” from a 1784 letter to his daughter via Lapham’s Quarterly

“Get to Know the Turkey Species You Don’t Eat,” Matt Somiak, Mental Floss

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Urban Eggs

Backyard Chickens are the new status symbol in hipster neighborhoods and upscale suburbs, a way to have pretty feathered pets and go green with local, fresh organic eggs. What’s not to like? Okay, aside from the noise and the odors and the expense and the cats and the authorities and the parasites and the thieves and  Avian Flu?

Plenty.

Chickens Rule!

Great cover story in the current Smithsonian magazine:

“How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was modest.”

— “How the Chicken Conquered the World,” Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler, Smithsonian

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Turkey Carving Tips for Real Guys

Oh no! Despite reading Turkey Torching Tips for Guys you have a great big, fully cooked, deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey on your hands. You examine it minutely and discover there’s no little red zip tab to open so you can take out slices. What now?

That’s some big old avian cadaver you got there, buddy. There’s only one manly way to divvy it up. That’s right: chainsaw.