The meat is stringier, tougher and generally speaking less appealing than the tender meat we have come to expect from conventional broiler chickens. That hasn’t stopped the USDA from using the National School Lunch Program to get rid of some of the 100 million egg-laying hens culled each year.
The egg industry needs to find new markets to “dispose” of spent hens as more mainstream customers drop off because of the notoriously low quality. The primary options include pet food, cattle feed, composting — and schools.
Meat that is no longer good enough for KFC and Campbell Soup is being fed to our children, hidden in salads and chicken “burgers”.
Because the hens from the egg factories are often restricted to tiny cages, stacked from floor to ceiling, they are exposed to high levels of fecal dust and subject to heavy stress. This may account for the higher levels of salmonella infection and osteoporosis which leads to bone splinters in their meat.
USDA Allows Meat In Schools that Doesn’t Meet Fast Food Chains’ Standards (Huffington Post)
Fast-food safety rules trump those for school lunches (USA Today)
