A USDA ruling may now affect the quality of the chicken we eat. Avian leukosis, a cancer-like disease that causes tumors on chickens, is now considered a “trimmable condition”. (1,2) Yes. This means the chicken on your plate possibly had this disease, and quality-control inspectors feel it’s perfectly acceptable to still eat it.
How A USDA Ruling Came to be
An Executive Order (#13771) signed January 30, 2017 states “for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination.” (1) And then the President invoked the Defense Production Act to keep meat-packing and processing plants open during COVID-19. (4) Using these orders for its benefit, The National Chicken Council pushed their petition for regulations surrounding avian leukosis to get cut. (3)
Two regulations got the ax. Previously, an inspector examined the first 300 birds from each flock for the disease. If a chicken had tumors from avian leukosis, the carcass was condemned and could not be sold. (1)
But the USDA ruling approved the petition. Now an inspector isn’t required to examine the flock. They also don’t have to toss out the whole chicken if tumors are found while processing it. They can simply cut off the unsightly growth and still sell the chicken.
However, another USDA allowance significantly impacts the probability of inspectors even seeing the tumors, or anything else potentially wrong with the chickens that come through. They have given the green light to process chickens even faster, at 175 a minute. (5) That’s about three chickens per second. Many “imperfections”, including tumors and other quality-related issues, are getting completely overlooked.
Favoring Industry Economics Over Safety
Many experts express concern over faster production rates and allowing tumor-ridden chickens to go to market. Some workers’ unions worry that the speed endangers employees. Other food safety advocates fear avian leukosis is contagious to humans. (5)
The National Chicken Council declares the risk is incredibly minimal. They state condemning a whole bird contaminated with avian leukosis poses no public health benefit. In fact, they claim that eliminating any chicken is more of a burden on the economy and the industry. (4) The USDA ruling sides with the industry in this matter. Their #1 priority is keeping the meat industry open and running. (4)
Bad Becoming Normal
Regardless if avian leukosis can be transferred to humans, the USDA ruling is a little nefarious. Even in the National Chicken Council’s own words, they find it “burdensome” to have each flock inspected for disease. (3) But rather than improving living conditions and regulating farms to eliminate the disease itself, the industry pushed to make tumors seem a normal and perfectly acceptable condition.
Temple Grandin, a renowned animal welfare expert, and consultant for USDA wrote in Animals in Translation about the side-effects of selective breeding. By selectively breeding traits to make chickens grow bigger and faster, we eliminated key traits that were integral to chickens’ survival. Slowly roosters became violent towards hens, to the point of even rape and murder. It wasn’t normal behavior, but chicken farmers didn’t even notice. They just took the incidents as “something that happens”. Rather than fix the problem, farmers changed their perception and accepted it. (6)
Grandin calls these instances “the bad becoming normal”. We now have new regulations push for faster food production, less oversight, and accepting previously condemnable standards. The USDA ruling may not directly affect our health and well-being. But accepting the bad and letting it become normal doesn’t seem the correct path to health or happiness.
