Why We Need Chicken Nuggets

Much more than a wing or a drumstick, the chicken has an economic message.

Chicken Economics

Our story starts after World War II when we were concerned that our chickens needed a more nutritious diet. Looking for some answers, Thomas Jukes, a pharmaceutical scientist that had been working on antibiotic development, started to experiment with chicks. He got his results after dividing his birds into small groups. With each eating something different like olive oil or synthesized vitamins or Aureomycin leftovers from his other job, on Christmas Day in 1948, he observed that the antibiotic batch was the chubbiest. And the rest of the story is history.

Still, it took much more to get from skinny perky flappy chickens to fat big-breasted lazy ones:

We have a Chicken of Tomorrow contest that develops a prototype bird. We also have a Delaware woman, Cecile Long Steele, that accidentally receives 500 chicks when she ordered 50, She keeps, them, builds a shed, sells them to local restaurants, and is so successful, that eventually her venture expands to thousands of birds and the emergence of the broiler house.

This is where chicken nuggets enter the picture. At Cornell University, we have a group of scientists concerned with the waste that came from mass produced chickens. More than a bird, led by Robert Baker, they imagined (and created) chicken bacon, chicken sausages, and yes, chicken nuggets. Initially called the chicken stick, the first chicken nuggets had pressed chicken meat sucked off the bone that could be frozen and fried. Released in an agricultural bulletin, word of the procedure spread. Seventeen years later, McDonald’s grabbed the idea. Then again, the rest of the story is history.

Our Bottom Line: Innovation

At this point, we can ask what the story is really about. Indeed, whether it’s chickens, computers, or cars, we are looking at standardization, scale, and new technology.

But also, it’s Thomas Jukes, Cecile Long Steele, and Robert Baker, and the innovators that propel our economic growth.

Steve Jobs once told us that, “Some people say give the customers what they want, but that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d ask customers what they wanted, they would’ve told me a faster horse.’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

And that is why we have chicken nuggets.

My sources and more: Most of today’s facts came from the Bloomberg podcast, Beak Capitalism. Please also take a look at our past post on chicken production and China’s demand for chicken paws.