Oh, the economic crisis. The housing bubble has burst, banks are going under faster than a game of Battleship, and now, food companies are struggling too. Pilgrim's Pride, the world's largest chicken producer, has seen shares tumble to "$3.23 Thursday, down from $33 a year ago," according to the Wall Street Journal. The company is suffering from an onslaught of problems, including the rising costs of feed and fuel, the comparatively low cost of chicken, and looming debt. Pilgrim's Pride is currently trying to refinance and keep the company whole. Hopefully they're not counting their chickens before they're, um, hatched.

So, yes, we humans are overwhelmed. But for just a moment, can we please remember that we aren't the only critters in the world under a lot of stress? Halfway across the globe, the pandas at China's Wuhan Zoo have been freaking out. First they lost their home in the Sichuan providence earthquake earlier this year. Then, just as they were settling into their new digs, the poor pandas had to deal with massive crowds during a recent holiday week. The situation put the pandas in a panic to rival that of any Wall Street trader, and unlike humans, knocking back a few beers doesn't do pandas much good in the way of relaxation. But that doesn't mean the cuddly bears are immune to all human comforts — to calm the pandas during the stressful week, their keeper served them chicken soup. The pandas loved it.

Chicken's not just soothing, though, it's also healthy — or at least its legs are. Recently, scientists in Japan reported that they had identified proteins in chicken legs that apparently can help control high blood pressure. In the study, scientists fed collagen from chicken legs to hypertensive rats, and a mere eight hours later, the collagen-fed rats had lower blood pressure than those in the control group.

But don't rush out and bite into the the first piece of chicken you see. Remember: Chicken is only healthy if you don't forget to cook it. In perhaps the most depressing chicken-related news in the last few weeks, the federal government announced recently that 34 people in 12 states have became sick after eating raw or undercooked chicken from frozen entrees. The people who fell ill apparently didn't read the instructions stating that the entrees needed to be cooked in the oven — they just popped them into the microwave.

One way to know whether your chicken is cooked or not is to get it fresh instead of frozen. If you like that idea, here's a trend for you: "The illicit urban chicken movement," as the Christian Science Monitor's Big Green Blog called it last Wednesday. Apparently more and more people in urban areas are keeping chickens. Health officials have concerns about sanitation and bird flu, but proponents claim that the chickens make both great pets and meals.

But what to do with all that chicken poo from you backyard clucker? Well, you could always take a tip from the Netherlands and burn it. The Dutch recently fired up a power plant that's fueled exclusively by chicken poop. According to Inhabitat, the biomass plant "has even been described as being carbon neutral, since it will prevent the manure from sitting in fields and seething greenhouse gases into the air." The plant's output will power 90,000 homes.

Yes, chickens have certainly been busy recently, which makes me wonder — if a chicken gets stressed out, what do you feed it to calm it down? Chicken noodle soup seems just a little mean.

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. She blogs at ihearyoulikestories.com.

Image from Corbis, "Week in Food" photograph from Corbis, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.