Thread by @jwmares

Modern chickens grow 500-800% faster than they did in 1925.

What used to take 4 months now takes 6 weeks. Even "organic" chicken reaches the market in 8 weeks.

So what's making them explode in size? 🧵

In 1925, it took 112 days (16 weeks) to raise a 2.5-pound chicken.

By 1950: 12 weeks for 3 pounds.

Today: 47 days for 6.5 pounds.

University of Alberta researchers raised chicken breeds from 1957, 1978, and 2005 side-by-side with identical feed.

The 2005 bird grew 4x larger than the 1957 bird at the same age.

Same feed, but wildly different results.

Every chicken package proudly says "No Hormones Added."

That's technically true. Hormones in poultry have been illegal since the 1950s.

But this label is misleading.

It's not hormones making chickens grow like this...

The real drivers:

Selective breeding for explosive growth and highly optimized feed formulas.

Modern broilers need only 1.8 lbs of feed to gain 1 lb of body weight.

In the 1940s, they needed twice as much feed for the same weight gain.

Contract farming plays a role here.

Farmers who raise chickens for big companies (Tyson, Perdue, etc.) must sign contracts that strip away their control.

The company owns the chickens and provides all the feed.

Contract farmers are legally required to use only the company's feed.

They can't substitute it, can't test it, can't even know what's really in it.

The feed formulas are proprietary.

Think about this:

The farmer raising your food isn't allowed to know what's in the feed. These aren't just basic grains, but formulas engineered for maximum growth.

Companies guard these recipes like Coca-Cola guards its formula.

Additionally, farmers often shoulder the financial and reputational hit when a flock gets sick or drug residues show up, even though the feed formula is proprietary and outside their control.

In other words, they’re penalized for problems they can’t fully trace.

Even organic farmers rarely see the full ingredient list of their “organic” feed.

They get labels, but the exact mix of additives, supplements & growth-promoters? USDA’s 2024 transparency rule reveals feed quality specs, yet the precise formula stays secret.

We're messing with a complex biological system we barely understand.

Chickens that grow 5x faster than nature intended, eating mystery feed formulas designed by food scientists. What could go wrong?

The human body evolved eating animals that grew naturally over months or years. Now we're eating birds that pack on unnatural amounts of weight in weeks.

We're essentially beta testing this on ourselves.

When you eat chicken, you're consuming whatever made that bird grow explosively fast.

The industry says "trust us, it's just good breeding and feed."

But you can't even find out what's in that feed!!

The "no hormones" label is accurate but incomplete. The real story is advanced breeding and nutrition science.

More transparency about these methods would benefit consumers!

We deserve to know how our food (and our food's food) is made.

RT the thread if you found it valuable.

A bit about me:

I founded @truemedpayments, @kettleandfire, and @drinksurely. Follow me to read more about health and startups.

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