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Comment by porknubbins | Hacker News Reader

Non organic chicken is one of the few foods I find to be really disturbingly cheap. .99 to $2/lb range for a living organism to have been fed, slaughtered, transported and marked up at retail is a little off putting.

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It is designed to allow poor people to have meat. A modern miracle really.

I don’t purchase it because I have enough money to buy chickens that been humanely raised. I believe this is a moral obligation if you can afford it. But I won’t judge people who can’t afford it to buy chickens raised this way. If my fortunes change I will be grateful I can still buy a chicken. While I’m not in that situation I will continue to consume free range, organic, “happy chickens” that only had 1 bad day.

I wonder about this too.it feels like the availability of cheap meat has a significant social.impact that I don't see discussed anywhere. If factory farmed meat was unavailable a significant section of society would only rarely be able to afford meat. Put another way, the availability of cheap meat disguises the true extent of poverty in this country

Chicken is cheap because the feed conversion ratio is very good: apx 1.6 kg of feed (corn) in yields you 1kg of chicken out. Only some varieties of fish does better. In comparison, beef has a ratio of around 5 to 7 (10 if you just count the meat).

It's also cheap because there are very few protections and regulations for the animals and the fact that selective breeding has gotten their farmed lifespan down to just 6 weeks.

Isn't it government subsidized? It's only cheap because our taxes pay for it?

If anyone can confirm with a source and what would be the natural cost of chicken, I'd be interested.

Subsidies are certainly part of it, but the entire process is extremely efficient.

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