Source: The Record (Kitchener), September 29, 2008, KEVIN SWAYZE

International poultry expert Peter Hunton is tired of the question.

“What came first? The chicken or the egg?”

The Cambridge man answers in a deadpan tone.

“I don’t have a good answer to that question.”

But ask Hunton, 72, a serious question about his life’s work and conversation comes easy for a 2008 inductee to the International Poultry Hall of Fame.

“My goal has always been to bring all the science down to a level people can understand.”

His involvement with the group means travelling to conferences around the world. On a world map hanging in his upstairs hallway, there’s probably 100 push pins marking places where he and wife Nita have travelled.

A native of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, he came to Canada in 1966 with a degree in agriculture from Durham University and a master’s from the University of London.

He came to work at Shaver Poultry, as the chicken company’s first staff scientist. The Canadian company was expanding around the world and Hunton helped Don Shaver develop chickens that produced the best quality eggs in the shortest time using the least feed.

Hunton’s specialty is eggs. Decorated ova vie for space with chicken figurines and books in his home office. He also worked for the Ontario Egg Marketing Board in his four-decade career. His licence plates — IM 4 EGGS — is his personal advertisement for “nature’s perfect food . . .

“There is nothing else, when you add a little heat, can produce a living creature,” Hunton said.

Eggs on their own offer a portable, protein-packed meal. That makes chickens a boon to subsistence farmers in poor areas of the globe. They need little care, can be left to scrounge for feed, but can provide food or income from egg or meat sales.

Hunton remembers the nutritional black eye eggs received in the 1980s. Eggs are naturally high in cholesterol. Hunton said “flawed” scientific studies linked eating them to high blood cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes in humans, he said.

“They fed eggs to rabbits and cholesterol levels soared . . . but rabbits didn’t normally eat cholesterol, so of course the levels went up.”

When Hunton started at Shaver’s, the top laying chicken would produce 260 eggs a year. Today, selective breeding and specialized feeds have pushed that to more than 300 eggs a year.

“Same size. Same quality. Same nutritional value.”

Chickens for eating have changed, too.

In the 1960s, birds were scrawnier and usually sold whole by butchers. They took 50 days to reach maturity.

Today, birds are 10 per cent meatier and reach the same size in as few as 35 days. And they’re usually sold in pieces.

That’s nothing for a fan of wings or drumsticks to cheer, however. Today’s chickens have three times the breast meat of 1960s birds, but at the expense of small wings and legs. They were less profitable to sell.

It’s not all been smooth sailing as chickens were bred for fast growth, more meat and uniform size.

In the 1970s, Kentucky Fried Chicken started complaining about the beefy birds they were getting. Sure, they grew bigger faster, but they packed on fat instead of meat, Hunton said.

It took a while to develop breeds that were leaner but just as big in a shorter time.

Over the last two decades, demands for animal rights have changed how chickens are raised, Hunton said.

In Europe, some countries have already banned caging chickens. In Canada, chicken producers follow voluntary guidelines for cage size.

It’s easy to tell if chickens are crammed in too tightly. They tell you.

“They make different noises. They have different behaviours,” Hunton said.

As for the argument that chickens are happier and healthier living out of cages, Hunton is unconvinced. There are predators outside that could never get in a barn.

“Many of the hens with access to the outdoors don’t go outdoors,” he said. “I don’t know . . . they’re certainly not more productive.”

---

Posted by Admin on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Housing, Poultry
Tags :: animal welfare, chicken, eggs, Farmers, Housing, meat, Poultry
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---