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In fact, industrialized chicken is in many respects hard to beat. Chicken flesh is healthier for humans than beef, and it lends itself to a wide array of culinary applications. It takes only about 2 pounds of feed to generate a pound of meat—this is what’s known as its feed conversion ratio—compared with the 6 pounds of feed required for a single pound of beef. What’s more, unlike pigs and cows, chickens don’t produce significant amounts of methane. Handle chickens right and you can repurpose their waste in a bunch of creative ways, including feeding it to cows and sheep. Sounds good, right?

The problem is, Americans eat 96 pounds of chicken per person per year. At that scale, it’s hard to be environmentally responsible. Chicken requires more water and power to process than any other meat (about 4,000 gallons per ton), and once that water is used it turns into toxic sludge. Also, in the middle of that lovely ball of meat is a set of internal organs full of pathogenic bacteria.

Then there’s man’s inhumanity to poultry. Factory chickens are raised under conditions that make the box Alec Guinness enjoyed in The Bridge on the River Kwai look like a suite at the Ritz. Their beaks sometimes have to be trimmed so they don’t peck each other to death in the cramped quarters, and they’re on a constant feed of antibiotics to try to stay ahead of the diseases that spread so quickly in hot, badly ventilated chicken houses. The best news for a feed chicken is that it’s probably not going to live more than 13 weeks.

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– http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/fakemeat/

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They may be the most pampered chickens on the planet.

On certain days, a truck pulls up alongside their quiet, spacious coop on an Amish farm here and delivers a feast that seems tailored to a flock of two-legged aristocrats. Before long, the rust-colored birds are pecking away at vegetable peelings and day-old bread from some of Manhattan’s most elegant restaurants, like Per Se, Daniel, Gramercy Tavern, the Modern and David Burke Townhouse.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/dining/in-pursuit-of-tastier-chickens-a-strict-diet-of-four-star-scraps.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=todayspaper

“In 2010, Lufthansa worked with the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP to answer a variety of questions concerning inflight dining, among them, why passengers were ordering tomato juice onboard at an exaggerated clip. Fraunhofer’s scientists found that perceptions of saltiness and sweetness drop by as much as 30 percent onboard, due largely to the fact that our odor receptors (taste being largely a function of smell) are compromised in the bone-dry environment of an airplane cabin. This might make the salty-sweet punch of tomato juice more attractive to people who wouldn’t touch the stuff on the ground, but the impact on more subtle foods like seafood, chicken, and pasta can be devastating.”

– http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2013/the-fare-up-there/