Who is popular today?

“Chicken,” declared Buck, “is the great compromise.”

To emphasize the point, he held a morsel aloft, which made him look like the Statue of Liberty, only with antlers instead of a crown and a chicken wing for a torch. Hot sauce dribbled down his hoof.

“Chicken,” he continued, “is where carnivores and vegetarians meet in the middle. It’s like Fleetwood Mac: Maybe not your favourite but still to most people’s taste.”

Great, I thought, now I have Rhiannon stuck in my head.

And then I thought: What a stupid thing for Buck to say today. Chicken wings are to Super Bowl Sunday what turkey is to Christmas, ham is to Easter or Doritos are to 4/20.

At least, that’s the way it was last year, when rumours of a wing shortage compelled the Chicken Farmers of Canada to issue a press release telling us to calm down, they had it under control. As people who had grown used to eating whatever we want, whenever we want it, Canadians would not have to go without. These are the sorts of crises that consumed us pre-pandemic.

But what about now? Will we eat as many wings today, with access to pubs and restaurants curtailed and Super Bowl parties, described by Dr. Bonnie as “events that are almost designed for the spread of COVID-19,” on the banned list? (Please, Dear Reader, tell us you’re not having your buds over to watch the game.)

Yes, says the Chicken Farmers’ Lisa Bishop-Spencer, Canadians are still expected to gnaw their way through 76 million chicken wings — roughly two apiece — during today’s game. It’s just that we’ll eat them differently. “Most people are doing curbside pickups, or they’re having them delivered,” says Bishop-Spencer, on the phone from Ottawa.

In fact, even during the pandemic, wings remain so popular that Canada has to top up the domestic supply with ones imported from the U.S., Brazil and elsewhere. “We don’t grow enough chickens to supply Canadians with all the wings they consume,” Bishop-Spencer said.

Why not simply ramp up production to meet demand? Because that would leave a surplus of other bird bits. This is the poultry farmer’s dilemma: Just as is the case with their children, Canadians do not love all chicken parts equally. They want wings. They want breasts. Backs, legs, feet and that little flippety bit at the end of the wing, not so much. Some of the less-popular cuts get exported to Asia.

All this is moderated by Canada’s supply-management system, in which quotas limit how many birds are grown. Every eight weeks, industry players – farmers, processors, restaurant reps and so on — gather to determine how many chickens the country will need over the next two-month period. The idea is to avoid both surpluses and shortages, to keep prices relatively stable.

Of course, that stability went wobbly when COVID came charging in like a fox in the henhouse. Right away, the industry lost much of the food-services sector — restaurants, bars, institutions, fast-food joints — that normally accounts for 40% of the chicken Canadians eat.

Sales in butcher shops and grocery stores rose as more Canadians began cooking at home, but not by enough to make up for the loss of all those chicken fingers and chicken burgers being served as pub grub or cafeteria food. Farmers cut production by over 12 per cent in May and June, and then by 11 per cent in July and August (though levels have since risen again.)

Processing plants were sent reeling, too, particularly when confronted with staff shortages early in the pandemic. For a while, they compensated by turning out more whole birds and bone-in cuts, the kind that take less labour to process.

That last bit actually played into the changing tastes of Canadian consumers. The traditional Sunday roast chicken dinner, which took flight decades ago, has returned to roost during the pandemic. Being hunkered down at home has meant we’re spending more time in the kitchen, thumbing old recipe books that might still be stained with grandma’s gravy.

The industry is good at adapting, Bishop-Spencer says, noting how it organized farmers from other provinces to fill the gap when avian flu temporarily wiped out Fraser Valley-based poultry farms in 2004. That episode still made Islanders feel vulnerable, though, as it coincided with the exodus of our own broiler industry, which largely shifted to the mainland after a couple of big Victoria-area processing plants closed. The term “food security” popped up a lot.

Just something to think of as Canadians, who eat more chicken than any other meat, take their wings for granted on Super Bowl Sunday in the ­middle of a pandemic.

jknox@timescolonist.com