Chicken out

Many red meat eaters think that switching to chicken is the lesser evil. Think again. We are importing chicken wings, thighs and drumsticks – admittedly my most favorite parts of the bird – but now I am having second thoughts after learning that imported chicken causes more heartaches to our farmers. Is it the fact it’s deep fried? No, it’s simply the fact that if we continue to eat imported bird parts, we compromise our local chicken industry. Not just the poultry owners but a whole value chain connected to chicken.

First to be affected are the MSMEs who sell the other parts with now colloquial names like IUD and Betamax, names used by street vendors to indicate the “isaw”(chicken intestines) and the chicken blood in squares (which look like the old Betamax tapes), respectively. The vendors also sell chicken feet (cutely called Adidas), gizzards and liver. These parts make up a big chunk of our street food culture. They could disappear if local chicken growers stopped raising chickens due to inability to compete with cheap “dark meat” imports.

Just to explain, First World countries, especially the US, export their dark meat (legs and thighs) because consumers only like chicken breast. They call chicken breast the white meat that is preferred by those avoiding too much fat, thus manufacturers have reengineered chickens to have larger breasts. The drumstick and thighs then become discards – and exported to Third World countries like ours. Here, we venerate dark meat as the preferred choice. Well, that is because it is way cheaper to import these “discards” than buy them locally. Most chicken places will sell dark meat and you may be hard pressed to find breast except in five-star hotels and restaurants.

We may also lose a lot of chicken manure that becomes good fertilizer for the farmer. If there are less local chickens, there will be less manure, unless we start importing that, too.

The feed manufacturers for poultry type chickens will also be in distress, but they can shift to making feeds for other livestock so they are not too much of a problem. But the chicken value chain in total will be the most affected industries – from the poultry owner to the street