Green chickens are sold in the USA

A Reddit user posted a photo of a green chicken on the site and asked if it was normal. Many answers correctly identified this phenomenon as "green muscle disease."

Not many people would find green chicken MEAT an appetizing prospect, although it does not pose a food safety risk, according to the USDA . But this means something even more unpleasant about the mass production of factory-farmed chicken.

What is green muscle disease ?

Green muscle disease is the common name for a condition called ischemic myopathy or deep thoracic myopathy. This occurs due to limited blood supply to the flight muscles of chickens and turkeys.

Blood flow to this area is restricted when birds flap their wings frequently and the muscles gain more mass. The pressure restricts or cuts off blood supply, causing muscle tissue to die.

Several factors are thought to contribute to the frequent flapping behavior of farmed birds. These include stressful conditions, such as when birds are caught to be loaded onto trucks for slaughter, as well as sudden changes in light conditions. Another possible reason is the cessation of feeding a few days before slaughter.

Factory farms are also inherently stressful places for chickens and other farmed birds. Thousands of them are kept together in barns with very little space per bird. 

Green meat is usually removed from the bird's body during processing, but sometimes it ends up on supermarket shelves with whole birds. Green muscle disease is not new, but poultry industry officials say it is becoming more common. The main reason is that chickens are bred for higher body weight.

“Green chicken is the result of industrial breeding practices that cause chickens to grow so unnaturally large and so quickly that there is not enough blood flow to their breasts,” Eliza Allen, vice president of programs for PETA, told Plant Based News.

Today's broiler chickens not only grow three times faster than fifty years ago, but they can also weigh four times as much. In the United States, about 70 percent of chicken meat comes from larger birds weighing more than 5 pounds.

The pressure on chickens from selective breeding means that green muscle disease is not the only muscle myopathy they can suffer from. Others include "wooden breasts," in which the chest muscles harden, and "spaghetti chicken," in which difficulty breathing deprives the muscle tissue of oxygen and causes the fibers to separate.