Poultry Mania

The origins of the millions of selectively bred and intensively reared hybrid layers and broilers that supply the eggs and meat for the modern British poultry industry may be traced back to the extraordinary decade that Punch, in 1853, was moved to label the age of 'The Poultry Mania'. It is ironic that, in a desperate rearguard action to save itself from the self-inflicted salmonella scandal, this huge, modern, agribusiness should have stampeded the government of our day into introducing regulations that now threaten the survival of those very breeds, the original gene bank, that created it.