I’ve been buying local grass-fed chickens for the last two years and I feel confident that the  farmer (Peter) has clean and safe environment for the chickens and that the grass and feed they eat is healthy for the chickens and healthy for me. I call them happy chickens and I’m pretty happy about eating them too.

My daughter Mackenzie visitin some chickens at Polyface farm in Virginia.

A recent Consumer Reports magazine study of supermarket chickens confirms my belief in the poor conditions of industrial chickens and reaffirms my decision to buy chickens from a real farm.  It found that two-thirds of 382 birds tested from 100 supermarkets were either contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter bacteria, the top causes of foodborne illnesses.   Tyson and Foster farms had the worst records more than 80 percent testing positive for bactiera, and Perdue the best with just over half (56 percent) free of germs.  Sixty percent of air chilled chickens (which are refrigerated after processing instead of dipped in chlorine) had the best record with 60 percent free of germs. (Yes, your chickens are dipped in chlorine!)`

Although they didn’t test farm-raised chickens, (i.e raised on a real farm and not a football arena) farmers who sell directly to their customers have good reason to make sure their chickens are safe and since they’re not living in crowded conditions they’re not making each other sick and living amongst lots of poop!.  For more details on how industrial chickens are raised, see this article from Rodale Press on “Supermarket chickens tainted with bacteria.”

I found these statistics on the USDA web site about food contamination:

-Millions of people get sick from dangerous bacteria in food every year.
-Public health data in 2000 show that there are more than 5 times the number of dangerous bacteria in our food than we were aware of in 1942.
-Many people don’t link their illness to foodborne bacteria. They think they have a case of the flu.

Make sure you’re careful when you prepare your chicken.  The internal temperature should be 165 degrees and wash your hands and surface area good before you move on to your next task.  The USDA (and I Martha Stewart) says it is uneccessary to wash chicken because germs are killed during cooking.

Check out Seacoast Eat Local’s Harvest Guide online to find out where you can buy chickens in the Seacoast Area.