Interesting. If the market does have a preference, the rest can go into soup or to the fast-food industry where the customer won't be able to tell.

Maybe not hormones, but what about other substances, like antibiotics.

Obviously the chicken they import have left legs on both sides.

I mean to suggest that left legs do get regular injections, perhaps.

Thank you for the informative answer. I can try to take a few photos when it gets somewhat safer to go to supermarkets

Pure speculation, but perhaps they have an automatic deboner only for right side legs. Looking at e.g. Foodmate's deboner: "Depending on the configuration, the system is suitable for only left legs, only right legs or a combination of both."

Another thought: substantial numbers of chickens get vaccinated. While I don't have any idea how that is actually done, some ways of applying vaccines are likely "sided" because the humans who apply the vaccination are predominantly right-handed.

@fredsbend I just did some digging and found this article from the Polish Supreme Audit Office. While the report says that 82% of controlled chicken producers used antibiotics, what's more alarming is that it also states...

"In each case examined, the use of antibiotics in animal breeding (both pigs and poultry) was justified by medical reasons.However, according to the Supreme Audit Office, it was not possible to reliably establish the actual reasons for the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry, mainly due to the weakness of the surveillance system, which lacks reliable data."

Actually, chickens do not get any injections in industrial livestock farming in Europe, they usually get all medicine, minerals, etc with their food and water. It simply would be too expensive to treat every single chicken individually.

@spickermann: if you can back that with a reference rather than an assertion, it would make a good answer.

@Oddthinking, I came across something a couple of years ago (via either the BBC or the NYT, i.e. a half-way decent source) describing that consumers in Central Europe had noticed that similarly-branded food had ingredient variations depending on the country (e.g. the amount of meat in pasta sauce). I can't remember the detail, but consumers were apparently crossing the border to buy better quality goods in Austria. If the right legs of chickens are commonly believed to be superior, they could potentially be reserved for sale in countries considered more prosperous than Bulgaria.

@MarkMorganLloyd: Yep, it is a possibility. But we need some references that it is actually happening.

@Oddthinking here is the assertion I mentioned earlier bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39900362 Now we need somebody in a German supermarket to see if there are any left chicken legs. Also bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43741545 which should be easy enough to xref to EU regulatory initiatives.

@Oddthinking Wouldn't common sense dictate that, considering there are 50 billion chickens slaughtered every year, 2.5 million of which in Bulgaria alone (apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/… appendix table 2), injecting them all manually with medication/hormones would be too expensive?

As an aside, I would add that I grew up on a chicken farm and often injected chickens (with vaccine against fowl pest). To do this you pick up as many chickens an you can hold in one hand, then inject all the legs in your hand. Sounds strange, but you catch chickens by one leg, and bundled together upside down you can hold quite a few. You don't care which leg it is, you don't even get to choose. So it must be 50-50 anyway.

@Nzall: Welcome to skepticism, where "common sense" is recognised as a fallacy.

@Oddthinking I see. And if I can get numbers on how many injections a chicken would need to get per month for medication and vaccines if it didn't go through the food and derive numbers on how many hours that would take?

@RedSonja Out of curiosity: How many chickens did you have on your farm and how many could you inject per minute that way?

@Nzall it was a very small family business, so just 10 000. It's about 2 sec per jab, with a vaccine pistol and a bag of vaccine. Catching them is the hard part! Usually the whole family is involved. If they are free range in pens it takes forever. If they are in cages, opening the cages and wiggling the creatures out takes time. If they are outside you wait till they come home to roost.

Birds are funny creatures. The trick is to make no eye contact. Then you can walk right up and grab a leg. With chickens you have to watch the wings flapping, they have sharp bits which can rake skin off your face. Still got those scars...

@Nzall I rather think most chicken vaccines are mixed in their drinking water nowadays.

@RedSonja Yeah, that seems like that would be the most efficient way currently. 2 seconds per jab for 10,000 chickens would take 5 hours for the lot. How many medications and vaccines would an average chicken get in their lifetime? And how long is that lifetime?

@Nzall That would be much too much info for this comment string. My knowledge is no longer up to date, try Wikipedia.

I think you meant "NO chickens are injected with growth hormones", but your phrasing said exactly the opposite.

@BobJarvis-ReinstateMonica: Thanks for the catch. Fixed.

@Nzall I would dismiss it as a theoretical argument, simply overtrumped by empirical evidence - i.e. someone describing how they caught chickens in a chicken farm. Now, with complete respect to @RedSonja, we would ask for a more verifiable source than "a random person on the internet said so in a comment".