The other day I bought chicken chops.
I went along to Belmore Butcher to buy my ethical, biodynamic free range meat - hoping to come out with the heady thrill and lets face it, smugness, of doing the right thing for the chicken and the right the for the world. I wanted to feel the glowing buzz of being a 'good global citizen'.
Instead, I scuttled back into my car feeling kicked in the guts and a little foolish about having just handed over $31.50 for my 8 little chicken chops. (Who ever heard of chicken chops anyway? I wanted marylands. Or I wanted drumstick and thighs. But thats what the friendly, old-school butcher offered and I was too shy to question. Whats with this fancy 'chop' business?? And is that why it cost so much? Is that why they did't have prices on anything??) I felt stung.
It tasted delicious, fed me and Hoof and a friend for a dinner one night, and then Hoof and I the next. Five meals in total = $6.30 of chicken per meal. Not bad value. But still I continued to feel a little uncomfortable about the price. I'm on a fairly poultry salary (*boom tish*) and sometimes the grocery bill is a shock. I like to do the right thing, I like to see myself as the person doing the right thing.. and yet my hip pocket still really hurt.
That is until a couple nights later, reading the chapter on chicken production in 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer.
When we think of factory farming and chickens we often think of 'Battery hens' and we probably think we have solved that problem to some extent. Chickens aren't in cages any more right? They are in big barns, they have straw on the floor, they can move around, there are pictures on the packets and it looks kinda fine. It's all good right? Wrong.
I won't tell you everything about factory farming because I'm not an expert. [
Jonathan Safran Foer and
Peter Singer and
Anna Krien are - read their stuff) But here are some highlights that are beyond the ubiquitous thought of 'The chickens don't have enough space - thats why factory farming is bad'.
It's not just about animal welfare. Its about our welfare too. These chickens can be truly foul.
Here goes.
Those cheap chickens we eat have been roaming around a barn with a floor covered in putrid shit along with the chickens who have died and are rotting and decomposing. They are bread to grow so fast and so fat that their bones often break under the strain. This means they are hobbling around with their bodies dragging around in all the shit. Gross.
'Free-roaming' sounds good huh? All it means is 'no cages'. It doesn't mean they have a whole lot of room. They are required to have access to outside. But this 'access' can just be a tiny opening in a huge barn with mesh across it and doesn't mean they can actually get out.
Did you know about the lights? They often keep lights on for long periods of time, or keep them off for long periods of time to force chicken's body clocks into unnatural cycles - to make them grow faster, eat more, sleep less, to modify their behaviour, force molting and to change their laying patterns. Its madness.
And the killing part? Chickens are meant to have their throats cut before they go into scalding water. Many go in alive. Then they go to the mechanised eviscerator. This is the gross bit. If the machine doesn't cleanly remove the guts and innards it means that the intestines break and shit goes all over the chicken. Next they go into another vat of water - which pretty much becomes shit soup - every single chicken, contaminated or not, goes through this vat to get 'cleaned', and also in order to soak in some water to increase the weight of the chicken that arrives in our supermarket, and eventually our plate. Yuck. This shit can literally make you sick. Ever had a 24 hour tummy bug? Could be from the amount of faeces you just ate in your last chicken meal.
Suddenly, paying 32 bucks for 8 chicken chops didm't seem so bad. If I can't afford a chicken that has been raised and fed properly, and killed cleanly and humanely - I just shouldn't be buying or eating chicken. Simple.
More about our unsustainble demand and expectations for animal protein in future posts.
More than 9 billion “broiler” chickens are raised in sheds each year.(9) Artificial lighting is manipulated to keep the birds eating as often as possible. To keep up with demand and to reduce production costs, genetic selection calls for big birds and fast growth (it now takes only 6 weeks to “grow out” a chick to “processing” weight), which causes extremely painful joint and bone conditions.(10) Undercover investigations into the “broiler” chicken industry have repeatedly revealed that birds were suffering from dehydration, respiratory diseases, bacterial infections, heart attacks, crippled legs, and other serious ailments.
At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung upside-down, their legs are forced into metal shackles, their throats are slit, and they are immersed in scalding-hot defeathering tanks. They are often conscious throughout the entire process. Click here to read more about an undercover investigation at a KFC supplier’s slaughterhouse, where workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls.
Great video from Australian Animals at
Makeitpossible.com
