Back in August of 1999, I was at a funeral for a relative when I ran into my cousin, "Rodney" (not his real name). Now, I hadn't seen "Rodney" in almost 10 years, so naturally, I was anxious to catch up with him and see what he had been doing with his life since I last saw him.
I told him about my job, my family, etc and we made some general small-talk for a few minutes, and then Rodney told me about his career.
He said he was a lab assistant at a [well-known food brand's] poultry facility in the south. He said the hours were long and the job was quite an 'adventure'. Curious...I pressed him to explain what he meant by 'adventure.'
What he told me next not only made me laugh in disbelief, it scared the hell out of me...
"Well, I am involved in R&D for [well-known food brand]. Specifically, we have been trying to make the 'perfect chicken' for years...a 'Super-Chicken' if you will...and for the most part, we've succeeded," Rodney explained. "Now, I don't know all of the details," he leaned in and whispered, "because they have me doing one thing, while my co-workers are all doing their own thing. I have no idea what they do because they keep us separated. We don't share information. But one thing I DO know is that the goal is to make an all-white meat chicken, and we're about 98% there already," he added.
Rodney told me that the project was commissioned/sponsored by a fast food chain (the food brand's #1 customer) who did not want to spend any more money mechanically separating and forming bits of the "cheap" white meat and throwaways on the chicken (upper thigh, rib) into their famous chicken nuggets and value-menu fried chicken sandwiches. They wanted the entire chicken to be premium, white-meat.
Rodney went on to tell me that the bio-engineered birds were bigger than most chickens, fatter...taller. And the scariest thing...they were AGGRESSIVE. Real aggressive. He said he had witnessed an incident where a stray dog had wandered onto the grounds where the chickens were and watched helplessly as the dog was literally ripped to shreds by the chickens. He said that it was very difficult and dangerous to go near the chickens for fear of attack and his team were constantly worrying that one or more of these birds would escape and hurt someone. He was deadly serious and didn't crack a smile as he told me this.
That got me thinking. Maybe this bio-engineered 'super-chicken' has primal instincts and qualities like its pre-historic ancestor, the Velociraptor. And if that is the case, maybe Rodney had some genuine concern about these things wandering around in the wild.
Looking back now, it all sounds funny..a bit absurd, even. And I would be the first to admit that. I couldn't believe what my cousin was telling me. But if Rodney's story is true (and I have no reason to doubt him, given his religious background...and to this day, he stands by his story), it makes you wonder, what other animals are being genetically modified right now in this country?
Perhaps all the stories about chupacabras being escaped bio-engineered creatures really are true.
What else is out there?
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