How a shipping error more than a century ago launched the $30 billion chicken industry

In 2021 , people around the world will consume nearly 74 billion of chicken, up from 8 billion in 1965 .

In 1923 , a chicken hatchery accident set off the chicken revolution as we know it.

In the first half of the 20th century , chicken accounted for well under 20 percent of meat consumption in the US . Today , it’s about 45 percent .

Chickens have been in the Americas almost as long as Europeans , first stepping foot on what is now the Dominican Republic in 1493 , on Christopher Columbus’s second voyage.

Researchers believe the birds were first domesticated for cockfighting, not farming, in the ancient Greek city of Pergamum even built a cockfighting amphitheater.

Charles Vantress created a hybrid bird that converted feed to muscle more efficiently than his competitors.

In the 1970s , public health professionals had increasingly linked consumption of dietary fat to rising rates of heart disease.

Chicken was long considered feminine, while beef was considered masculine.

Over time, chicken has changed into the meat of choice for bodybuilders and Paleo dieters.

But breeding over 9 billion of them for meat in the US each year has proven to be an environmental, labor, and animal welfare catastrophe.