|
Poultry farming is a part of the United States's agricultural economy. ==History== In the United States, chickens were raised primarily on family farms until about 1960. Originally, the primary value in poultry keeping was eggs, and meat was considered a byproduct of egg production.〔U.S. Department of Agriculture – National Agricultural Statistics Service: Trends in U.S. Agriculture – (Broiler Industry )〕 Its supply was less than the demand, and poultry was expensive. Except in hot weather, eggs can be shipped and stored without refrigeration for some time before going bad; this was important in the days before widespread refrigeration. Farm flocks tended to be small because the hens largely fed themselves through foraging, with some supplementation of grain, scraps, and waste products from other farm ventures. Such feedstuffs were in limited supply, especially in the winter, and this tended to regulate the size of the farm flocks. Soon after poultry keeping gained the attention of agricultural researchers (around 1896), improvements in nutrition and management made poultry keeping more profitable and businesslike. Prior to about 1910, chicken was served primarily on special occasions or Sunday dinner. Poultry was shipped live or killed, plucked, and packed on ice (but not eviscerated). The "whole, ready-to-cook broiler" wasn't popular until the 1950s, when end-to-end refrigeration and sanitary practices gave consumers more confidence. Before this, poultry were often cleaned by the neighborhood butcher, though cleaning poultry at home was a commonplace kitchen skill. Two kinds of poultry were generally offered: broilers or "spring chickens," young male chickens, a byproduct of the egg industry, which were sold when still young and tender (generally under 3 pounds live weight); and "fowls" or "stewing hens," also a byproduct of the egg industry, which were old hens past their prime for laying.〔"The Dollar Hen", Milo Hastings, Arcadia Press, 1909; reprint Norton Creek Press, 2003, Robert Plamondon, Ed., pp. 145–150.〕 This is no longer practiced; modern meat chickens are a different breed. Egg-type chicken carcasses no longer appear in stores. The major milestone in 20th century poultry production was the discovery of Vitamin-D (named in 1922),〔"Poultry Nutrition", Ray Ewing, Ray Ewing Press, Third Edition, 1947, page 754.〕 which made it possible to keep chickens in confinement year-round. Before this, chickens did not thrive during the winter (due to lack of sunlight), and egg production, incubation, and meat production in the off-season were all very difficult, making poultry a seasonal and expensive proposition. Year-round production lowered costs, especially for broilers. At the same time, egg production was increased by scientific breeding. After a few false starts, such as the Maine Experiment Station's failure at improving egg production,〔"The Dollar Hen", Milo Hastings, Arcadia Press, 1909; reprint Norton Creek Press, 2003, Robert Plamondon, Ed., pp. 225–229.〕 success was shown by Professor Dryden at the Oregon Experiment Station.〔Dryden, James. Poultry Breeding and Management. Orange Judd Press, 1916.〕 Improvements in production and quality were accompanied by lower labor requirements. In the 1930s through the early 1950s, 1,500 hens was considered to be a full-time job for a farm family. In the late 1950s, egg prices had fallen so dramatically that farmers typically tripled the number of hens they kept, putting three hens into what had been a single-bird cage or converting their floor-confinement houses from a single deck of roosts to triple-decker roosts. Not long after this, prices fell still further and large numbers of egg farmers left the business. This marked the beginning of the transition from family farms to larger, vertically integrated operations. Robert Plamondon〔(Plamondon.com: the home of Robert Plamondon and all his works! )〕 reports that the last family chicken farm in his part of Oregon, Rex Farms, had 30,000 layers and survived into the 1990s. But the standard laying house of the surviving operations is around 125,000 hens. This fall in profitability was accompanied by a general fall in prices to the consumer, allowing poultry and eggs to lose their status as luxury foods. The vertical integration of the egg and poultry industries was a late development, occurring after all the major technological changes had been in place for years (including the development of modern broiler rearing techniques, the adoption of the Cornish Cross broiler, the use of laying cages, etc.). By the late 1950s, poultry production had changed dramatically. Large farms and packing plants could grow birds by the tens of thousands, radically impacting labor practices alongside farming techniques.〔Stuesse, Angela and Laura Helton. "Low-Wage Legacies, Race, and the Golden Chicken in Mississippi: Where Contemporary Immigration Meets African American Labor History," December 31, 2013, ''Southern Spaces'', http://southernspaces.org/2013/low-wage-legacies-race-and-golden-chicken-mississippi.〕 Chickens could be sent to slaughterhouses for butchering and processing into prepackaged commercial products to be frozen or shipped fresh to markets or wholesalers. Meat-type chickens currently grow to market weight in six to seven weeks whereas only fifty years ago it took three times as long.〔Havenstein, G.B., P.R. Ferket, and M.A. Qureshi, 2003a. Growth, livability, and feed conversion of 1957 versus 2001 broilers when fed representative 1957 and 2001 broiler diets. Poult. Sci. 82:1500–1508〕 This is due to genetic selection and nutritional modifications (and not the use of growth hormones, which are illegal for use in poultry in the US and many other countries). Once a meat consumed only occasionally, the common availability and lower cost has made chicken a common meat product within developed nations. Growing concerns over the cholesterol content of red meat in the 1980s and 1990s further resulted in increased consumption of chicken. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poultry farming in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|