Heritage Chicken
The Lost Art of Chicken
By Chris Perrin ‘The Party Food Dude’, and
author of BlogWellDone.com

Have you ever had a heritage chicken? 
Take a step back…do you know what a heritage chicken is?  Do you know why heritage chickens
are important to your dinner plate, your health,
and your world?

If you do, count yourself amongst a small, but slowly growing minority of eaters.  If not, it’s certainly okay, the following is a brief primer on heritage chicken and their place in the culinary world.

What is Heritage Chicken?
In short, heritage chickens are natural, un-genetically modified breeds of chicken.  Similar to heirloom tomatoes, heritage chickens are the chickens our parents and grandparents used to raise or buy in the grocery store.

This begs the question, if heritage chickens are the chickens people used to buy, what’s sitting on the grocer’s shelves as you read this?  It’s a brave new world out there.  Today’s food industry has weeded out basically all diversity in its chicken population.  Now, every chicken raised for foods by most chicken farms comes from the same basic DNA.  Also, whether we like it or not, it is DNA that has been changed by science to create uniform birds that grow much bigger, much faster. 

While fast growing chickens may sound like a good thing, it comes at the cost of viability.  This new breed of bird cannot survive outside of a shelter, they are minimally intelligent, and can grow so large their legs break under their own weight.  In fact, most of these chickens are artificially inseminated because they are generally immobile.

Contrast this with heritage birds which come from breeds that have been around hundreds of years.  Yes, they’re smaller and yes, they may be different, but they are not without their advantages.

The Three Whys of Heritage Chicken -
Taste, Health, and the World

What about taste? Remember the last chicken dinner you had?  Was it a nice juicy bird, perfect for roasting, stewing, or grilling?  Was it moist and juicy, dripping because it was ready to burst with delicious flavors?  Was it fried, stuffed, seared to a golden brown?

Finding chicken like that at the store is tough.  The breed used today have downplayed flavor to ensure rapid growth and, as a result, the taste of the chicken has suffered.  Plus, because the birds cannot move, they develop little musculature and do not develop much flavor.  There is, after all, a reason heritage birds are winning awards for their flavor.

Are heritage birds healthier for you?  Yes, most heritage birds are raised using organic practices and are non-genetically modified.  Plus, they are generally better cared for and eat a better diet than factory farmed chicken.

Lastly, how can heritage chicken help the world?  First, overall, heritage chicken farming has less of an environmental footprint because they need less artificial help to live.

Even more importantly, though, talk to any biologist and they will tell you that diversity is essential to the survival of a species.  Without the work of heritage chicken farmers, many of these chicken breeds would disappear entirely.

That’s not hyperbole.  Frank Reese of Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch and his friend and gardening expert P. Allen Smith are known to have the last one hundred birds of at least one breed.  The two men are working diligently to try to repopulate the breed before they go extinct.

Why is diversity so important?  Let’s use a hypothetical scenario in which there is a flu for birds, let’s call it a bird flu.  Now, let’s assume this bird flu were to suddenly strike and kill off a bunch of chickens.  If there were multiple breeds of chicken, some of them would be more able to withstand the flu (and be less apt to pass it on to humans.)  With only a single breed, if one chicken has a weakness to the flu, they all do, and they must be treated with antibiotics or slaughtered wholesale.

Both drive up the cost of chicken.  Neither is good for the environment.

The Problem?  Money’s a Problem and a Solution Why aren’t more people eating heritage chicken?  As it stands now, there are only a few heritage poultry farms and their wares are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.  This is a major problem that heritage poultry farmers are going to have to combat if they want to get a heritage chicken in every pot. However, this used to be a major obstacle for organic food, which has dropped in price as more and more people have asked for it.  In general, the best thing to do if you are interested, is to buy one heritage chicken (or even a package of heritage legs, thighs, etc.)  It would take a king’s ransom to eat nothing but heritage chicken, but buying a little at a time is a great way to show there is demand. If there is money, the food industry will listen.  When they do, there will be more heritage chicken available for your enjoyment, for your health, and for the world. Big Blend Radio - Chris Perrin was a featured guest on Eat, Drink & Be Merry! radio on June 26, 2010. To listen to Chris's interview, please click here.