I just saw an ad for a whole roast chicken – for under $2. $2 to raise, kill, prepare and cook an animal. So I did some research to see just how insanely cheap mechanized farming produce has become.
In the middle ages, an unplucked, unroasted chicken cost 5/8 of the daily wage of a master mason. This was a very highly paid and esteemed position for the day, but lets be conservative and assume that the equivalent would be someone on a current US salary of $60K per annum.
This would mean that a chicken cost around $150.
Gives some kind of perpective on what pumping oil into the ground and hormones into mammals can do.
The site below has some really interesting data on medieval food.