Rosie the organic chicken’s
Rosie the organic chicken’s life is little different from that of her kosher and Asian cousins, all of whom are conventional Cornish Cross broilers processed according to state-of-the-art industrial practice.
The Cornish Cross represents the pinnacle of industrial chicken breeding. It is the most efficient converter of corn into breast meat ever designed, though this efficiency comes at a high physiological price: The birds grow so rapidly (reaching oven-roaster proportions in seven weeks) that their poor legs cannot keep pace, and frequently fail.
The chicken houses don’t resemble a farm so much as a military barracks:
Since the birds are slaughtered at seven weeks, free range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option.
