Chicken Scratch is an ASPCA Blog feature that highlights interesting news about farm animals and farm animal welfare.

• Talk about irony: Chicken served at a buffet lunch during last spring’s Food Safety Summit in Baltimore has been deemed the source of a massive food poisoning outbreak. This unfortunate incident demonstrates the need for continued investigations into the sources of foodborne illnesses, which can help us understand the link between animal welfare and food safety.
   
• In a mind-bending piece about the industrialization of the meat industry and the harsh effects of industry control on farmers, Christopher Leonard traces the evolution of family farming into the “rainbow of brand names” you now see in your supermarket. With the majority of the industry’s market share in the hands of only a few poultry companies, one small change for chicken welfare can go a long way.
   
• Talk about a throwback! This graphic shows how ridiculously large chickens have grown since the 1950s. As we’ve been saying with our Truth About Chicken campaign, breed change has resulted in larger, faster-growing chickens, but the side effects of this unbalanced growth are problematic for chickens’ health and could be for consumers’ health, too.
   
• Vice, a global youth media company, just launched its new documentary series called “The Politics of Food.” The series, which will air monthly on the company’s food channel, Munchies, “uncovers the emotional, financial, ethical, and environmental impacts around what we consume.”