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Cruel truth of the chicken factories(cutting Daily Mail 23/11/01 by M..Hanlon.
There is little to distinguish between the to four - day - old chicks in the first picture above. The following images show only too clearly the monstrous growth rate of the boiler chicken. The bird on the left is destined for the battery cage, where it will spend its life laying eggs. But the bird on the right is a broiler, reared to grow four times as fast to ensure that the meat on our plates stays cheap. By the end of its life, which will last as little as five weeks, it is likely to have suffered a catalogue of illness says the RSPCA. It may also be lame and its skin infected or marked with ammonia burns from contact with droppings. The RSPCA, which conducted a five year investigation into the industry, says the suffering of the country's millions of broiler chickens has been overlooked, even though most consumers are aware of the plight of battery hens. Below Michael Hanlon investigates the brief and miserable life of the broiler chicken
************************************************************************* The short life of the broiler is not a happy one. No amount of hardheaded realism about the nature of modern farming can disguise the fact that for the 820 million chickens destined for the British dinner plate each year. It is nothing short of torture. While some welfare activists fret about the plight of wild creatures such as the fox, experts say any campaign to reduce animal suffering should start with the UK's colossal broiler chicken farms. Our demand for chicken is insatiable - Britons consume 1.5million tons of chicken and turkey
meat a year or one third of our bodyweight in poultry flesh every twelve months. It has become the generic meat, the most popular type of flesh in the world. Chicken is bland, had very little flavour - making it ideal for children. It is also acceptable to most religious groups. Chicken's popularity is also explained by the fact that it is astonishingly cheap. Keeping its price low demands farming practices that, were they used on pigs or cows, would cause a national outcry. Broiler chicken farms are simply protein factories; machines for turning chicken feed into edible fibrous chicken muscle as quickly and cheaply as possible. The typical broiler chicken has around six weeks to live. After hatching the chick is relatively blissful for three days while it lives on the nourishment stored up from the egg. Then the bird is moved to a vast windowless barn containing around 25,000 males and females. There is no natural light - bright lamps are turned on and off every eight hours to encourage rapid growth. The problems start as the chickens start to grow. By the time they reach slaughtering age, each animal has less space to stand on than an A$ sheet of paper. At hatching, the chicks weigh just a few ounces, but when they are killed their weight may have increased to nearly five pounds. Left to their own devices, chickens need more that twice as long to get to this weight, so farmers must force the chickens to grow rapidly. Careful control of the lighting can encourage, as can the use of high protein foods and drugs to encourage muscle bulking. The weight of all this muscle - which is the meat we eat - can break the immature bones of the bird's skeleton. It also puts pressure on its heart and can cause heart failure and lung problems. Meanwhile the floor of the barn is thick with droppings, and the stench of ammonia is overpowering. Many of the birds die, and their carcasses contribute to the he;lash atmosphere. Not surprisingly, chickens have traditionally been given huge doses of antibiotics - not only to promote growth but also to fight diseases. Laws have reduced the number of antibiotics used, but the birds are still fed two types of germ killer. If the chickens survive this ordeal, they are often crippled, Jostling for space and fighting to reach food and water troughs breaks thousands of bones. It is estimated that nine out of ten birds are effectively lame by the time they are killed. The ammonia released in the urine and the faeces soaked straw and wood shavings underfoot eats away the chickens legs, causing the black burns that can often be seen staining the flesh of supermarket joints. What happens next should be an exercise in automated, painless execution, but often it is not. The chickens are loaded into lorries and driven to the slaughterhouses - a traumatic experience for animals whose lives have been spent entirely in doors. At the abattoir each bird is shackled upside down and dunked into an electrifies bath of water. This is supposed to render it unconscious but in many cases the chicken remains aware of the electric cutter severing the carotid arteries at the back of its neck, causing it to bleed to death. This all sounds horrendous, but according to Peter Bradnock, chief executive of the British Poultry Meat Federation, British chickens and turkeys are kept in safe controlled environments which restrict the spread of disease. Rejecting the term factory farming - let's call it indoor rearing shall we, factory farming is a little misleading, he points out that intensively farmed chickens are less likely to contract diseases such as salmonella and e.coli than their free-range cousins. But despite its protestations, it is clear that a great deal of cynicism pervades Britain's indeed the world - poultry industry. The chicken farmer's case is not helped by the tendency of the industry to gloss over the less palatable aspects of the raring of poultry - labeling battery eggs as "farm fresh" for example, and printing pictures of happy chickens on egg boxes and meat packaging wins them few friends among an increasingly skeptical public. In the end, you pays your money and takes your choice. If Britons want to pay as little as 50p a pound for their meat, they have little cause to complain about the farmers. But if we care about animal welfare - and about what we eat, it might be as well for us to buy free range, even if this means eating a little less. Its tastier too.m.hanlon@dailymail.co.uk//cutting ends THE RSPCA ARE THE BIGGEST HYPOCRITES UNDER THE SUN..... |
CAUTION SHOULD BE EXERCISED
WHEN READING THIS THE TWO CHICK IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE QUITE DIFFERENT
BREEDS!THE ONE ON THE LEFT IS A "LIGHT" BREED THAT LAYS COPIOUS
AMOUNTS OF EGGS THE OTHER A VERY " HEAVY" MEAT BREED THIS ACCOUNTS
FOR SOME OF THE DIFFERENCE!