Our Surprising Switch In Poultry Purchases

The Beta 632 thigh fillet system debones 14,000 chicken thighs (7,000 birds) per hour. Adding to poultry processors’ profits, this amazingly efficient piece of equipment points to our changing chicken taste.

We like our dark meat more than ever.

Chicken Economics

Reflecting our preference for white meat, for decades, we’ve been breeding bigger breasted chickens:

Now, we might need bigger thighs also.

We all know that thighs are tastier and cheaper than the chicken breasts “that reign supreme in America.” Now though, trumpeted by Chipotle and Sweetgreen, thighs are everywhere. Increasingly, their price has even edged past breasts at the supermarket.

Deboning

Our story starts (and ends) with the deboner. Once we could debone the breast, technology opened new mass production possibilities with chicken cutlets, nuggets, and tenders. At the same time, our chicken story continued with exports. Because we loved our white meat breasts, we had to figure out what to do with the rest of the chicken. The solution came from the thighs, legs, and paws we could send to China, Russia, and Mexico. Just one example, at econlife we told how Perdue developed a Chinese market for what- had-been worthless chicken paws.

Then, however, the deboning process became even easier. Since thighs have one straight bone and breasts have many, the meat is easier to separate. Soon producers realized deboned thighs could have larger margins than their white meat neighbors. At the same time, in the U.S., foodies have recognized that thighs taste better and cook more dependably. In addition, Asian and Latin American recipes prefer darker meat.

Our Bottom Line: Demand and Supply

As economists, we can say that it all returns us to demand and supply. On the demand side, taste has moved beyond the chicken’s breast. But then, most crucially, on the supply side, we have the equipment to mass produce deboned dark meat. I guess that when taste meets innovation, we get the recipe we need for eating more dark meat.

Sadly, if larger thighed chickens are bred, we also could wind up with a more balanced chicken.

My sources and more: Thanks to Slate Money’s Emily Peck for inspiring today’s post. From there NPR and The Atlantic had more detail about the switch to thighs. Then, taking the next step with chicken economics, the Beta 632 website told us much more and had our featured image.