Battery chickens
Discussion
My fiancé decided one day to rescue 5 chickens who had lived a life of misery and were on the way to the chopping shop.
Incredible seeing them develop and explore their surroundings. Their feathers came back; their legs strong and their character plain to see. They even built relationships with one another. Two became very close and inseperable. We built massive enclosures for them; one poor girl was bullied by the others and so we built her her own enclosure and introduced one of the others in, one at a time; there was one that wouldn’t bully her and so those two lived together and the other three had there own space.
Free range chicken / eggs isn’t much better... these birds are basically treated as machines and once the egg count drops; then it’s the kill floor for them.
But what seeing these things does is broaden ones own perception of our choices and the consequences of those choices; almost always behind closed doors. What of the chicken on your plate? What sort of life did she have?
Organic and free range are marketing talk for the most part; pushed in a way as to alleviate guilt from the consumer. The truths of any of it is actually quite horrific. I know this as a family member works in food marketing. Truly organic and free range is impossible to sustain... There’s simply no way to fulfil the demand for birds / or any animals, that are farmed that way.
The good news is that the demand I mention is slowing, in the west as people are waking up to the health / environmental and ethical consequences of eating so many animal products.
A friend of mines sister runs a farm down south and she said to me that if people knew how intelligent pigs and cows are; pigs especially; on a par with our own pet dogs; then a massive chunk of the population would have a very different opinion about what it is on their plate; but, she’s says; thankfully, people just don’t think..
Incredible seeing them develop and explore their surroundings. Their feathers came back; their legs strong and their character plain to see. They even built relationships with one another. Two became very close and inseperable. We built massive enclosures for them; one poor girl was bullied by the others and so we built her her own enclosure and introduced one of the others in, one at a time; there was one that wouldn’t bully her and so those two lived together and the other three had there own space.
Free range chicken / eggs isn’t much better... these birds are basically treated as machines and once the egg count drops; then it’s the kill floor for them.
But what seeing these things does is broaden ones own perception of our choices and the consequences of those choices; almost always behind closed doors. What of the chicken on your plate? What sort of life did she have?
Organic and free range are marketing talk for the most part; pushed in a way as to alleviate guilt from the consumer. The truths of any of it is actually quite horrific. I know this as a family member works in food marketing. Truly organic and free range is impossible to sustain... There’s simply no way to fulfil the demand for birds / or any animals, that are farmed that way.
The good news is that the demand I mention is slowing, in the west as people are waking up to the health / environmental and ethical consequences of eating so many animal products.
A friend of mines sister runs a farm down south and she said to me that if people knew how intelligent pigs and cows are; pigs especially; on a par with our own pet dogs; then a massive chunk of the population would have a very different opinion about what it is on their plate; but, she’s says; thankfully, people just don’t think..
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