EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
How Hen Fever Led to the Chicken of Tomorrow
(Part 2: The Chicken of Tomorrow Contest and
the Development of the US Poultry Industry)
It was Howard C. Pierce’s idea. In
1944, Pierce, the poultry research director
for A&P Food Stores, addressed a group
of Canadian poultry producers who had
expressed great concern that the poultry
business would face catastrophic decline
when the war ended and beef and pork
were no longer rationed. Pierce challenged
them to breed a meatier chicken, and his
comments at that meeting eventually led
to A&P’s sponsorship of a long-range
program to develop such a chicken, which
A&P publicists dubbed “The Chicken of
Tomorrow Contest.” Historian Margaret
E. Derry called this contest “the most
important event in the 20th century for
the poultry-meat-breeding industry.”
The poultry industry had come a long
way since Hen Fever raged in the early
19th century. A burgeoning broiler industry, which began in the 1920s, was supplying major metropolitan areas such as
New York City with chicken, but for
most Americans, chicken was only served
on Sundays, holidays or special occasions. Beef and pork were what most
Americans thought of as meat; chicken
was considered a meat substitute. Meat
rationing during World War II increased
the consumption of chicken on the home
front when, according to nutritional historian Amy Bentley, “…up to 60% of ‘US
Choice’ grade cuts of beef, was reserved
for military consumption.” A World War
II manual entitled How to Stow and Take
Care of Food on Shipboard reminded sailors to take especially good care of meat:
Mainstay of many a well-balanced
meal, meat is one of the major providers of life-essential complete proteins needed to repair body tissue as it
wears out, and to furnish the building
blocks for new muscle and sinew in
husky, hardy men who follow the sea.
But meat is more than that. It is the
provider of those savory aromas that
awaken the appetite — the part of a
meal that makes a man finish feeling
well-fed. Meat “sticks to the ribs.”
Courtesy of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.
By Brian Grinder and Dan Cooper
Wax model of an “ideal” chicken from
the Chicken of Tomorrow Contest.
Without meat, according to myriads
of government pamphlets, the war effort
would be placed in serious jeopardy. Civilians were encouraged to eat chicken and
organ meats instead of beef and pork.
Thus, chicken sales increased during the
war, but once the war ended, chicken
producers were justifiably concerned that
meat-hungry Americans would abandon
chicken and embrace the return of beef
and pork to the dining room table.
While there were a number of factors
that kept chicken from competing effectively with beef and pork, the most important factor was price. In 1950, chicken
cost more than hamburger. Furthermore,
the average size of a chicken was about
three pounds, which was too large for
two people to consume but too small for
a large family. A larger, less expensive
bird along with more choices of cuts and
10 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2015 | www.MoAF.org
products was needed before chicken could
ever hope to conquer the meat industry.
Historian Glenn Bugos wrote that “Doc”
Pierce hoped to, in the words of a 1947
Saturday Evening Post article, “squelch
that dream of two chickens in every pot by
providing one bird chunky enough for the
whole family.’”
That same article noted that the goal of
the Chicken of Tomorrow Contest was to
provide Americans “a chicken with breast
meat so thick you can carve it into steaks,
with drumsticks that contain a minimum
of bone buried in layers of juicy dark meat,
all costing less instead of more.” The contest offered a prize of $5,000 to the entrant
that came closest to producing a chicken
that most closely resembled a wax model
that was considered to be the ideal bird by
the contest committee. The contest ran in
a three-year cycle with state contests held
the first year, regional contests held the
second year and a national contest held
the third year. The cycle was repeated
twice with the first cycle ending with the
national contest in 1948 and the second
cycle ending in 1951.
The 1948 national contest was held in
Georgetown, Delaware, with 40 contestants
who were selected based on the state and
regional results of the previous two years.
Each contestant sent 720 eggs to Delaware,
where they were hatched and reared for 12
weeks under identical conditions. At the
end of the 12 weeks, the birds were weighed
and sent to be slaughtered. 50 carcasses
were selected at random from each contestant and judged on the basis of feed conversion, average weight, rate of feathering and
uniformity of stock. A similar process was
used in the 1951 national contest, which was
held in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The Vantress Poultry Breeding Farm of
Live Oak, California won both national
contests. The winning birds were CornishNew Hampshire crosses; a bird with blood