A Bug in the System: Why last night’s chicken made you sick.

Wil. S. Hylton

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Each year, contaminated food sickens forty-eight million Americans, of whom a hundred and twenty-eight thousand are hospitalized, and three thousand die. Many of the deadliest pathogens, such as E. coli and listeria, are comparatively rare; many of the most widespread, such as norovirus, are mercifully mild. Salmonella is both common and potentially lethal. It infects more than a million Americans each year, sending nineteen thousand victims to the hospital, and killing more people than any other food-borne pathogen. A recent U.S.D.A study found that twenty-four per cent of all cut-up chicken parts are contaminated by some form of salmonella. Another study, by Consumer Reports, found that more than a third of chicken breasts tainted with salmonella carried a drug-resistant strain.

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Aussi :

How a massive breeding contest turned a rarely eaten backyard bird (le poulet) into the technological marvel that feeds the world

Andrew Lawler, revue Aeon

“ On the eve of the Civil War, exotic fowl arrived from China and Indonesia, and these large and flamboyant chickens became fashionable to collect and breed. They were crossed with domesticated birds and, by the 1870s, new varieties emerged that produced more eggs and meat. This development coincided with the rapid growth of cities in the northern United States, and the rising demand for cheap protein to feed millions of factory workers.

T he First World War pushed the chicken from the backyards of US farms to the forefront of the war effort. Herbert Hoover, head of the effort to feed American troops and desperate European civilians, encouraged US citizens to raise birds so that domestic pork and beef could be sent to the boys over there. By 1918, the post office allowed chicks to be shipped via Express Mail, spurring the growth of a hatchery industry that provided egg-laying birds to farmers around the nation. Five years later, in a little town in Delaware, a housewife named Celia Steele ordered 50 chicks from a hatchery through the mail, and by mistake received 500. She housed them in a small building until they were large, and then sold them to Jewish markets in New York City. The broiler industry was born, centred on the Delmarva Peninsula that includes Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, and serving what was the world’s largest urban area. In 1928, the Republican National Committee put out an ad backing Hoover as the presidential candidate, promising ‘A Chicken for Every Pot’.