Chickens are a little bit more complicated. The same review that couldn’t give any conclusive numbers about “organic” pork also couldn’t provide clear data for “organic” chicken. Overall, the “organic” birds had more Omega-3 fats, although the numbers get a little complicated here, because the ratios vary depending on whether you test white or dark meat. But there was still quite a lot of variation, with some studies finding no benefit.
Considering what we know about chicken feed, this isn’t surprising. Like pigs, chickens will have a better or worse fat quality depending on what they eat. The biggest sources of Omega-3 fats in a chicken’s diet are green plants (grass and leaves) and the bugs that eat them. So it’s not hard to see how some of the technically “organic” chickens might not have better Omega-3 levels, while truly free-range birds do.
But there was a diamond hidden in the rough here: the difference between fast-growing and slow-growing chickens.
Fast-growing chickens are hybrid breeds prized by the food industry because (as their name implies) they grow to slaughter weight very quickly. They’re specifically bred to have an insatiable appetite; they’re basically designed to put on maximum weight in minimum time. This makes them very large and very fatty – up to 50% fattier than free-ranging traditional breeds.
Unfortunately, they’re also pretty helpless without human care. Their immune systems are weak, they have a hard time with basic foraging and ranging, and they tend to do very poorly on pasture. Their bones are fragile, and prone to fractures. They have larger breasts (18% of body weight compared to 9% for traditional breeds), but correspondingly smaller hearts, making them prone to random heart failure for no particular reason.
Essentially, the hybrid breeds have sacrificed health, hardiness, and everything else for the sake of rapid growth. That’s all fine if you’re raising chickens in a factory farm, but it makes hybrid chickens very unsuitable for life in the barnyard. So a lot of small-scale farmers (people who honestly pasture their birds) turn to slow-growing heritage breeds instead.
These heritage breeds have significant nutritional differences. One study, for example, found that the O6:O3 ratio in the breast meat of pastured slow-growing birds was 4.3:1 (not bad), while for pastured fast-growing birds on the same feed, it was 6.8:1 (way too high)!
The upshot: buying your chickens from a small CSA or family farm will give you a double whammy of nutritional benefit from both the healthier breeds and the healthier diet. If they’re truly pasture-raised, they’re probably also heritage breeds by default.
Source: paleoleap.com