One of our favorite foods is being celebrated — it’s National Chicken Month, nicely complementing September’s Mushroom and Rice Month. The versatility of chicken — served in numerous ways ranging from Southern fried style to sandwiches to salads — drives a demand that has reached over 8.6 billion birds a year in the U.S. alone. This is almost a 50 percent increase from the broiler production in 1990. Americans eat nearly 39 pounds of chicken per capita annually, over 25 percent of the consumption of all meat, poultry and fish. Georgia is the top producer — followed by Arkansas and Alabama. The result is certainly not chicken feed but a $52 billion a year industry. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov
Saturday, September 20th. We pretty much take for granted that the municipal water that comes out of the faucets in our homes is safe to drink. But getting to that point was a major advance for civilization and health. The nation’s first water filtration system began operating on this date in 1893 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The system was a nearly three-acre sand filter, which trapped typhoid fever-causing bacteria from water piped from the polluted Merrimack River. In the four years after the filter was in operation, the town’s death rate from typhoid fever had fallen almost 78 percent from what it was in the four years preceding filtration. For those taking no chances, bottled water manufacturing is a nearly $6.5 billion a year business in the U.S. today. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.
Sunday, September 21st. On this date in 1959, Congress acted to help some Americans achieve minimum levels of nutrition, passing a bill that created food stamps for those with low incomes. In 2008, the Food Stamp Program was renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Today, there are over 46 million Americans enrolled in the program, more than double the number of a decade ago. The average value of the benefit they receive each month is almost $133, and the total cost of the federal program is some $80 billion a year. The states with the participation rates at over 18 percent are Oregon and Michigan. States with the lowest are Wyoming, New Jersey and New Hampshire. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy from the American Community Survey at <www.census.gov>.