The Green Circle Chicken Story

In 1985, Ariane Daguin started D’Artagnan to market the first fresh foie gras in the U.S. She was uniquely qualified to do this because she grew up in Southwest France, surrounded by good food, from her father’s 2 Michelin-starred kitchen to the foie gras markets she frequented with her grandmother. In Gascony, she has said, they live to eat.  

 

When she came to New York City for college, she did not realize that chicken would be what she most missed.  The chicken she ate was bland and mushy, not at all like the robust chicken in France. Ever since, she has been on a mission to create better chicken. After pioneering free-range and organic chicken decades ago, she turned her attention to a whole new bird.  

 

 

Ariane believes that a happy chicken is a tasty chicken. The Green Circle program was inspired by the common-sense, waste-nothing philosophy of days past, when chickens lived on vegetable scraps and roamed freely around farmyards and pastureland.  

 

D'Artagnan already had plenty of farming friends in the Amish and Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania, so Ariane found a few who were willing to try something different.  

 

Then, Ariane had a few 4-star chef friends in New York City collect the fruit and vegetable peelings and cuttings in their kitchens. When D’Artagnan trucks delivered orders to these restaurants, they also picked up 5-gallon buckets of scraps to bring to the Amish farm. These carrot peels and onion skins, celery ends, and other trimmings were fed to the free-range chickens as a supplement to their diets. The chefs were competitive about whose kitchen scraps would create the best-tasting chicken. Weeks later, they tasted the chicken. The New York Times wrote about the process. 

 

“When I first tasted it, I was like, ‘Whoa,’” said Jean-Georges Vongeritchen ...  Witnesses say that after his first bite, Mr. Vongeritchen was on the verge of tears;  Daniel Humm, the chef at Eleven Madison Park, consumed an entire chicken in one  sitting.

 

 

Once the concept was proven, the program began in earnest. D’Artagnan partnered with farmers who shared the vision of rearing livestock humanely. The network of small Amish and Mennonite farms raises chickens the old-fashioned way, with respect for nature and the best animal welfare practices. Each partner farm is environmentally responsible, sustainable, and offers farm-to-table traceability.   

 

Today, Green Circle chicken is regeneratively raised in a pasture-based system of farming, where the waste is composted and returned to the soil to build the health of the land. It’s beyond net neutral—this farming is supporting and rebuilding the soil. 

 

The chickens are fed clean surplus vegetables from markets—bruised, cut, or otherwise unattractive vegetables—along with wholesome, regeneratively grown grains, including corn and soy. These unloved vegetables are saved from going to landfills, so not only do the chickens benefit from the vegetable diet, but it makes sense for the environment, too. This is the alchemy of turning food waste into healthy protein for people to eat. 

 

 

The chickens get more than twice the barn space required to be considered free-range, year-round access to the outdoors, and the ability to forage naturally. All that exercise contributes to the rich flavor you cannot get from factory-farmed chickens. And of course, no antibiotics, hormones, or arsenicals are ever used. The Cornish Cross breed chickens are raised to 8 weeks of age, as opposed to 5 or 6 weeks, the standard for conventional birds, and the heritage Gallus brun breed is raised to 86 days—an unthinkably long time for any commercially raised chicken. 

 

Green Circle chicken is Certified Humane® by Humane Farm Animal Care, regeneratively raised on managed pasture. The program was also recognized by ASPCA and included in their “Shop With Your Heart” list for meaningful animal welfare standards.  

 

The chickens are air-chilled and hand-processed in a low-volume facility near the farms where they are raised. The air-chilling process means the chicken will have no additional water weight, which leads to better post-cooking yields, with a deeper flavor profile and crispy skin. 

 

 

 

 

Green Circle chicken is a favorite among chefs. When he first tasted Green Circle chicken, André Daguin, one of France’s most decorated chefs and the father of D’Artagnan founder Ariane, congratulated her for reinventing his grandmother’s poultry. 

 

Green Circle has been featured on the front page of The New York Times and the TV show Somebody’s Gotta Do It with Mike Rowe (watch the video here). 

 

The holistic approach produces truly wholesome chicken. From start to finish, these birds are treated and fed well, and the result is a supremely tasty chicken.  If you ever needed proof on the plate that a happy chicken is a tasty chicken, you’ll find it with Green Circle.