September 30, 2007

The Case Against Humanity: Industrial Mechanical Poultry Farming

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 By the way, I don't buy the idea that eating free range chickens is a solution to the fucked-up-ness of factory farms. It's a step, I suppose, but you still don't know your meat, so to speak. The dirty work still occurs out of sight. Yeah, they've done away with the overt mechanical cruelty and provided the hen with a laid back life & comparatively decent food, but her destiny remains the same.

4 comments:

Skippy Spankmaester said...

Well, if it pisses PETA off I'm all for it.

stexe said...

I couldn't make it all the way through "phase 2" but I get the idea. And I disagree: Buying free range chicken IS a solution to factory farming! That is, if everyone did it, factory farming would be obsolete. If one person does it, he marginally reduces the suffering in the world. And just to play devil's advocate.... although I haven't eaten meat in 17 years, I can't say I know what a chicken's true destiny is. But it sure isn't dying of old age whilst surrounded by loved ones. More likely, it means getting captured and eaten alive by a predator. I personally think we can do without meat entirely, but if you're going to do it, do it responsibly. Even McDonald's recently upped their standards of animal welfare, at no small cost. These improvements mean something, however small.

Lance Ehlers said...

I don't know enough about the operation of a free range poultry farm to say anything with authority, but (and this is what I meant to suggest) I suspect that at the end of the "cycle," there's still a sudden mass slaughter which is gruesome to behold. I doubt they give them a gentle injection and show them a peaceful audio/visual production like in Soylent Green. In other words, if a consumer has a problem with the guilt which accompanies factory farming, there is still guilt in free range farming.

Skippy Spankmaester said...

In all seriousness if I had to slaughter my own animals for meat I'm sure I'd be eating far less meat.
I'm told I turned pretty green the first time I had to clean a squirrel.
But thats the wonder of modern society we no longer need to know what impact our lives have on the world around us. (For those of you that can't detect written sarcasm, it doesn't alway transfer well, please note a slight hint of it in the previous sentance).