I recently participated in the opening of a new Whole Foods Market Store in Centennial Colorado, an area just south of Denver.  My participation consisted of 3 days of cooking and sampling our Bell & Evans chicken nuggets to thousands of customers.  This is a great format that allows me to answer questions that customers have and ask questions that I have for the customers.  Sometimes I am able to convert Vegetarians back to eating chicken.  Often they just need a little education and some good honest answers.

 Participating in hundreds of these events over the years has helped me in the direction of how we operate at Bell & Evans.  A popular concern I had from many in Colorado was the GMO issue and Organic Certification. 

 In recent years, large seed companies unloaded their GMO seed on famers in a big way. Those farmers were told GMO seed was the answer to feed the growing world’s population. Now they are told that we need GMO seed to produce enough corn ethanol to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

 All of the certified Organic corn and soybean we purchase is of U.S. origin and the farms that produce these crops plant non-GMO seed. The best certified Organic grain farmer cannot build a wall high enough to prevent pollen from drifting from a nearby conventional field from spreading across his Organic field.  So to say our organic grain is 100 % GMO free would be wrong. 

 Now we have the lower cost certified Organic grain grown in China coming in through Canada and possibly other avenues.  I don’t have any reason to believe their Organic certification has any value. Many in the poultry and livestock production have resorted to this grain to buy market share because of its lower cost.  I am disappointed that retail buyers haven’t helped stop this wrong. 

We can grow all the certified Organic grain we need right in the U.S.A.  I like to know what I am paying for especially when I am paying a premium.  There is more feed stuff to come.

             90% of our diet consists of corn, extruded and expeller pressed soybeans. The remaining 10 % consists of vitamins and minerals.

            Many years ago, we were struggling with a bird health problem.  I thought maybe its cause was from mold in the rail car transporting soybean meal.  I went to the feed mill and asked the mill operator to open the rail car unloading door to watch it unload and inspect for mold.  As the door opened, this odor poured out.  It smelled like model airplane glue.  I asked the mill operator what the awful smell was. He said that’s Hexane, a cheap efficient solvent to extract the oil and vitamins from soybeans.  I immediately made my mind up that anything that smelled like that was not going to be part of our future chicken feed.  My next step was a lesson in soybean processing.

      Soybean extraction/processing. - The procedure involved in the separation of the oil and the protein meal from the whole soybean.

·        Solvent extraction (Hexane) - The process where by the oil is leached from flaked soybeans.

·        Pressing process- At elevated temperatures, using expellers or screw presses which utilize a worm shaft continuously rotating with a pressing cylinder or cage to express the oil from the beans after they have been ground and properly conditioned.

What is Hexane?

Hexane is a Petroleum by product of gasoline refining.  It is a highly explosive toxic chemical.  Hexane is a major air pollutant.  In fact it is classified as a HAP- Hazardous Air Pollutant by the EPA.  Hexane also steals our vitamin E.

       At the end of this separation process the livestock producer buys the protein, and fiber. The oil may be further processed into consumer grade.

        My question to you is – how can producers and retailers market chicken as naturally raised when one of the two main components of the diet are processed with a toxic chemical like Hexane?

        There is a lot more chicken feed to come. 

For further information, please feel free to read the Cornucopia report.

I am constantly asked what we feed our chickens that make them so different. Well let’s start with our philosophy. 
 Goal #1
 Feed needs to be of the highest quality ingredients and properly formulated to grow a healthy bird without adding stress.
 Goal #2
 When we eat the bird, we should be proud of the quality of its life.  The taste and tenderness should be excellent.  A quality protein we enjoy that also nourishes our bodies. 
 I don’t like the idea of eating chicken that was fed a lot of junk and might even end up smelling or tasting like what it ate.  Many of our competitors and especially some store brand chicken have a different philosophy in mind.  It’s all about cost and margins.  They sometimes forget that someone is going to eat this stuff.  Usually, we are talking about least cost formulating feed and it usually isn’t pretty.  They need to grow big and fast and cross the finish line alive. 
 Protein, fiber, energy, vitamins and minerals are the main components of a chicken’s diet.  Our Bell & Evan’s chickens get all the protein, fiber, and energy from our corn, extruded and expeller pressed soybeans.  I will stop here for today because I next want to get into the details of our feed ingredients and that will be a big story by itself.