Fair and Fowl

Check out Thailand’s chickens, they’re turning up everywhere!

When the alarm goes off, many of us are tempted to hit that snooze button. For thousands of Thai people struggling to wake up, their alarm can’t be turned off. That’s because it doesn’t have a snooze button and is running about outside, covered in feathers, pecking away at the ground. Chickens are the standard wake-up call for many Thais. It’s been this way for centuries. Chickens are one of the mainstays of life in Thailand, and not just in the rural parts. Even in towns, you’ll hear chickens and see them running around. Nobody questions this. Why would they?

Chickens, for many Thai people, are almost part of the family, and may have as much status as a cat or dog. Chickens also provide food, are a financial asset and if that’s not enough, also play their role in cultural and religious activities. Chickens are also on the menu, everywhere – unless you’re in a vegetarian restaurant. Thailand would be in a kind of culinary limbo without its poultry; even though so many recipes can use pork or beef, there are others that require eggs and plenty of them. The Thais have an ongoing love affair with chicken and it’s hardly likely to stop anytime soon, no matter how avidly the country embraces modern technology.

Traditional ways persist, and that’s because they work. Khun Jeab is typical of many Thais today, in that she keeps a flock of chickens. She runs a household in a small hamlet just to the south of Maenam on Samui. A good percentage of the village keep chickens. You’ll first see them running about on the small lanes outside the houses. They’re literally free-ranging. They’re also a lot more robust than chickens reared in cages, and are given no hormones or antibiotics. Khun Jeab and her peers tend to let them get on with their own lives. The chickens in return keep the ground clear of cattle ticks; they scavenge and eat earthworms, termites and insects. Villagers give them food too, such as broken rice, rice bran and ground corn kernels.

The hens will lay anything between 25 and 40 eggs per year, says Khun Jeab, all basically free food for the villagers, though many of the eggs are hatched in order to provide new chicks. The chickens are mostly consumed by their owners, friends and family. Some are taken to the market, with farmers selling up to ten at a time, and this is often done when the flock is too big or when the farmer needs extra money. Farmers know that people at the market will want the birds due to the tastiness of the meat, so the idea of keeping such chickens is much like putting aside money in the bank for a rainy day. And basically it’s just as safe: chickens like this never face problems with price, as demand is high and supply low. All this may seem incredibly bucolic, a happy arrangement that calls for nothing artificial – animal husbandry as it was thousands of years ago. Yet for all that, there’s still a darker side in some places: a day after their birth, chicks are taken away from their mothers as this stimulates the hen’s reproductive cycle and she will produce more clutches of eggs.

As we’ve seen the chickens and their eggs are mostly consumed by the owners and those close to them. There’s not enough to go round. And meanwhile the demand is absolutely huge. This is where modern chicken farming steps in, with factories, technology and a super-efficient transport network. As with rice, there’s not just a domestic demand but an international one. And Thai chicken turn out to be very, very popular. It’s been reported that even in faraway Scotland, entire schools have fed their students with chickens that were reared in Thailand. The USA also loves Thai chicken, although consumers may have no idea of the provenance of their meal. And when you watch your pet dog or cat lapping up his or her pet food, and it’s chicken, then guess where it came from?

The commercial production of chicken in Thailand is a massive business with big players all trying to get as much out of each broiler bird as possible. Hardly surprising, of course, and plenty of people are cynical about the care of the animals. That said, the much respected RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection and Care of Animals), an animal charity in the UK, spoke up for farming conditions in Thailand, saying how the Thais gave their animals a lot more space than did their counterparts in the UK, allowed the birds to grow for a longer time and gave them more rest. That’s relative, though – increasingly, consumers are so disgusted with factory farming the world over that an ever-increasing number are becoming vegetarian.

Life’s tough enough for the chickens being farmed in Thailand, but it can also be hard for the workers; there have been numerous complaints from workers in Thailand about their working conditions. Isolated farms can get away with abuse, and with international supply chains being complicated, buyers abroad are all too unaware of what’s going on so far away.

Thailand has a government agency called the Department of Livestock Development (DLD), which is very akin to the Department of Agriculture in the USA. It regulates what goes on in the chicken industry, and its goal is to maintain the highest standards. Overall it has a stellar reputation amongst its peers.

Thai chicken is well-nigh ubiquitous both within and outside the nation’s borders. The demand for chicken is far from peaking, and if you’re anywhere in the country, just listen out and you’re almost bound to hear the squawk of the nearest chickens, maybe no more than metres away. And when it comes to food, not many people – and the same goes for cats and dogs – seem to be able to resist the deliciousness of Thailand’s chicken.

 

Dimitri Waring