A sad story was released today. An undercover investigator for PETA has released a video documenting workers throwing live chickens, hitting them with fists, and urinating in an area where the live birds were shackled.
Also, chickens in general are treated so poorly. Take these facts into consideration:
1. Six to seven chickens are crammed together inside cages the size of a sheet of paper.
2. In order to prevent them from pecking at each other under such stressful circumstances, chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade.
3. When their worn-out bodies stop producing eggs, hens are sometimes "force-moulted" – during which they are kept in darkness and deprived of food and water for up to 14 days to shock their bodies into another laying cycle.
4. Ammonia fumes from their accumulated feces burn their throats and eyes and cause most birds to lose their feathers and develop blistering, ulcerated feet as well as breast and hock burns.
5. Many chickens are grabbed by their frail legs and wings – often causing broken bones – and stuffed inside cages for a long journey to the slaughterhouse, where they are hung upside-down in metal shackles and dragged through an electrified water bath. Many escape the electric shocks, only to have their throats slit and be dumped in scalding-hot defeathering tanks while they are still conscious.
For these reasons, I have started buying only "free range" chickens. Do not confuse this with organic. Organic just means they are fed organic feed, but does not mean they weren't trapped in these horrific conditions.
I encourage all of you to do the same. I bought a dozen eggs last night at Stop and Shop for only $1.99. Thus, they are not even any more costly than regular eggs.
6 comments:
Free Range might be better but it is not all it is cracked up to be. They make you think that these chickens are left to roam about pastures and eat/sustain themselves as they would in the wild. Not really true. I believe that the only requirement to be called "range" is to have access to the outdoors. That basically means nothing. The specific size, quality, space per bird, etc. are not requirements to be qualified as free range.
I also believe that free range chickens are debeaked as well. Males are killed right after birth.
I am sure that some free range companies are better than others but if normal practices bother you enough to go free range, you should do some investigation. Coca, you should just by a couple hens and stick them on your back deck. Real fresh eggs. You can take them for walks and feed them with organic fresh food!
punching chickens...now I've heard it all
I think it would be nice to have a couple of hens as pets. I would treat them very nicely. I could build them a little nest on my back deck.
Remember the Seinfeld when Kramer had a pet rooster named "Little Jerry"?
Steve - no I don't remember that Seinfeld but the fact that you brought it up REMINDS me that if we had you at Quiz-O we would've won b/c the last question in the 'theme' round was 'what did George say when he found out he got his girlfriend pregnant?' We already knew the theme (pro football teams) but we didn't know the quote (other answers from the round: WolfPACK, DeBeers, BUCKS county, Potato SKINS etc etc).
George said, "My (cow)BOYS can swim!"
I love that Seinfeld episode, esp when Kramer is walking Little Jerry on a leash in NYC! Classic Seinfeld moment. And this whole chicken story was very upsetting...makes me revisit vegetarianism.
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