Freakonomics Radio - 49. Unnatural Turkeys

Episode Date: November 16, 2011

Our appetite for breast meat renders our holiday birds unable to reproduce.

From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Risdahl. Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is the hidden side of everything. Dubner, welcome back. Hey, Kai, thanks. I've got a little Thanksgiving quiz for you. You up for that? No, I don't do quizzes. It's my show. All right, what? I'm going to force you today. All right, here we go. Americans will probably eat about 40 million turkeys this month. Now, I hope this doesn't kill your appetite, but what percentage of those 40 million birds do you think were the product of artificial insemination?

Really? That's the question. That's the question. It is really the question this week. Wow, okay. 82.6. I don't know. It's a great guess, great guess.

The truth is it's actually pretty close to 100%. Really? So there's no like turkey sex going on? Well, let's unravel this. All right. Let me ask you this, Kai. When you roast your family turkey, what ends up being the most popular meat that everybody wants? Always the white meat.

It's the breast meat. Always the white meat. My family, the same. Now, some people would say that's just because you want to increase the surface area for gravy. But whatever the case, Americans love their white meat. And this goes back to the 1950s when traditional turkeys got pushed out by a breed called the broad-breasted white, which grows bigger and faster than the traditional bird. And that broad-breasted white has been selectively bred to have the largest breasts possible. There's just one problem with this.

And I'm going to let Julie Long from the USDA explain it to you. The modern turkey has a quite large turkey breast, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create offspring. Create offspring. Come on, really. Did she just say that? She just said that.

So it gets in the way. On your air. Yeah, I know, right? And my mother's listening, too. So they can't, you know, do it. That's exactly. It's tragic, isn't it, if you think about it? And as a result, the turkey industry is built around artificial insemination, which is a very labor-intensive and hands-on process. Here's the way it works. A team of workers has to pick up each male breeder, the tom, which might weigh as much as 70 pounds, secure his contribution, as they call it in the trade, and then bring that to the hen house to inseminate each hen. And then keep in mind, with such intense consumer demand for turkey, this is not a once-a-year event.

Here's Julie Long again from the USDA. So that means once a week for five to six months, you have to go work with the males and then go work with the females in order to produce the meat that goes out for the consumer. Okay. So a couple of things. I love this in its entirety. One, who knew that girl turkeys were called hens? True. Two, I love the way she said work with.

You have to work with them. But three, this is also conceivably, just to get back to the business thing here, it's a jobs program. You need people to go work with these turkeys. That is a bright side, absolutely a silver lining. Now, keep in mind, if you don't like this idea and you want to serve your family a turkey this Thanksgiving, that's the product of natural, old-fashioned turkey reproduction, then you might turn to what's called a heritage turkey. Here's Cindy Muller, who raises heritage birds in Illinois. But keep in mind, as she makes clear, Kai, it'll cost you.

I know in some parts of the country, the price of a heritage bird for your Thanksgiving table can be over $150, $200 for a bird. No way. Way. Really? Yeah. That's a lot of money. It's a lot.

Well over triple, let's say, what you'd pay for a big bird. Just to let a turkey have a little fun in life, right? That's exactly right. I mean, look, the holidays are supposed to be a feel-good time. So you may decide that instead of making yourself feel good by dropping, let's say, $100 in the Salvation Army bucket, you might want to spend that $100 subsidizing the right of some male turkey to, well, you know. And females, it should be said. There you go.

And females. Freakonomics.com is the website. That's where you send all the hate mail this week. Stephen W., we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thanks, Kai. Happy eating. Yeah, I don't know about that.