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Comment by stuff4ben | Hacker News Reader

As a voracious meat eater, I am actually intrigued by the idea of a healthier chicken meat that takes the environment into consideration. If it tastes like chicken, even looks like chicken, is healthier than chicken, and has less of an impact on the environment/climate/conscience, why wouldn't you eat it? Now beef on the other hand...I still am on the fence there. What can I say, I like a nice medium rare, well-marbled, ribeye slightly charred on the outside. I don't think you can ever replace that.

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My wife and I run a small farm and one of our products is organic, pasture raised chicken. All of our birds spend the majority of their lives out on fresh grass in the sunshine and our never exposed to any antibiotics, pesticides and herbicides.

The difference that a bit of exposure to green forage in an outdoor environment makes, both to the flavour and texture of the chicken, is AMAZING. Industrial broiler barn chicken pales in comparison.

I'd encourage anyone seeking to buy a more environmentally friendly chicken to try to make contact with a local organic farmer who's able to raise his birds outside and in a humane fashion.

How would you say your pure chicken would compare to a USDA Organic chicken I can buy at the store?

I live in Canada so I can't compare directly to a USDA Organic chicken. However, based on a chicken one could get from Whole Foods, for example, our bird has a much richer flavour and a firmer, less rubbery texture. This part is very subjective, of course, but in a side-by-side comparison you would definitely be able to taste and feel the difference.

We also raise our birds to be much heavier than a store bought bird - on average about six pounds after processing vs three-ish pounds in the store. I'd wager that your meat-to-carcase ratio is probably higher for one of our birds, giving a better value. (Actually, it's better value regardless - we sell our birds for $4/lb vs $5/lb for the broiler barn organic birds in the store.)

Environmentally, there's less concentration of pollutants. All of the chicken manure goes straight on the grass and is a primo source of nutrients for subsequent hay crops. For me it's a win - I don't have to apply fertilizer nor clean out chicken barns.

Coming from an animal welfare standpoint, just because you're buying "organic" chicken in the store, doesn't mean they've been raised in a humane fashion. I carry no guilt in eating our chickens. They're not overcrowded, debeaked or in a dusty, foul smelling environment. They live as well as I can provide up until the day they go for slaughter.

This man has it right. Once you taste what chicken is meant to taste like you realize that 99% of the chicken you eat doesn't even taste like chicken!

In that case, the second best thing would be cutting down on beef consumption and treating it as the luxury it is. So eating that nice medium rare once every two months instead of once a week.

(I don't know anything about your consumption, just making a point.)

once a week?! whaaat? I want real beef, every day. No fake stuff please. Yes, be nice to the animals, raise them cage free yadda yadda. But I want the real thing.

Appreciate you're possibly joking, but the problem is that it is not possible to support the entire world in this manner.

Assuming we all share the goal of a famine free world, with its people living lives of relative equality, then the excessive consumption of meat in the west is a problem which needs to be addressed.

As the parent suggests, treat high quality meat like the luxury it is, and enjoy other foods instead. It's better for you, and better for your fellow humans.

I see a future where lab grown meat, and meat substitutes make up the majority of our consumption, and hand-reared, high quality meat is saved for special occasions.

Yeah with the health concerns over eating a lot of red meat (my side of the family has a history of colon cancer) and the fact that it keeps getting more expensive, we've relegated ribeyes to birthdays and our anniversary. So we get a package of ribeyes from Costco maybe 3-4 times a year (we celebrate as many birthdays and anniversaries as we can). Other than that we eat a lot of chicken and pork. We do consume a fair bit of ground beef for hamburgers and spaghetti however. In that case, I probably wouldn't notice the difference between fake beef and the real thing.

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