“People don’t really want to know what’s involved in processing meat, especially chickens,” says Brandon Septor. Around the world, every second, around 2,000 chickens are slaughtered for meat (World Animal Protection US). For decades, people have been buying chicken and eggs from big grocery stores, eating fast food chicken, and thinking nothing of it. Yet when they see chicken trucks pass by them on the freeway, often they are filled with solemnity.
Over the last 35 years, the number of meat chickens raised on factory farms has increased by seven times (Bolotnikova and Torrella). More than 98% of chickens in the U.S. are raised in large chicken factories. In 2018 alone, over 68 billion chickens were slaughtered for food worldwide. That same year, it was reported that the United States had the second highest number of chickens killed, 9.2 billion (“Factory-Farmed”). Chickens are very social creatures. Studies show that they are able to remember up to 100 faces (“Chicken Selective Breeding”). However, within chicken factories, they are seen as merely money, and food. The goal of the factories is to produce the most eggs and meat possible, make the most money possible, without any consideration of the actual lives of the animals.
In these factories, chickens enter the world in a massive indoor shed surrounded by thousands of other chicks. A few hours after hatching, the chicks are debeaked. This means that a portion of the chicken's beak is removed without any anesthesia, which often results in life long pain for the chickens. Debeaking is done in order to prevent them from pecking each other too much, which is a behavior that comes from overcrowding (“Factory-farmed”). Chicken factories are split up between meat birds and egg layers. Meat birds are selectively bred to have larger pectoral muscles, in order to have more meat to sell. This often causes numerous problems, such as skeletal and metabolic disorders, chronic hunger, tendon rupture, lesions, heart and circulatory disorders, heart attacks, ascites, muscle disease, deformities, foot and leg problems, tibial dyschondroplasia, and sudden death syndrome (“Chicken Selective Breeding”). This all ultimately results in the chickens getting so large they are unable to stand up, which often leads to the chicken dying because of their inability to walk to get water or food from the feeders. Egg layers go through a process called forced molting. This process involves starving hens of food and water for anywhere up to a month, which causes the chickens to go into intense stress resulting in them laying more eggs (“Factory-farmed”). If a male chicken finds himself in an egg laying factory, his life is wasted and taken away immediately, as he is considered useless. This waste includes 4-6 billion male chicks killed each year ("Factory-farmed").
Chickens within these “farms” will typically live for around forty days. Naturally, their life expectancy would have been five to ten years (“10 Things”). The most common method of killing factory-farmed chickens is called live-shackle slaughter. The chickens are hung upside down with metal stirrups/shackles around their feet, they are then passed through an electrified bath of water in order to make them unconscious before their throats are slit and their bodies are tossed into boiling water to defeather them (“Factory-Farmed”). This is one of the most “humane” ways to kill them, as it is the quickest. However, many chickens don’t become unconscious from the electrical bath and go through the rest of the slaughter process fully conscious (“Factory-Farmed). Factory-farmed chickens live their short lives contrary to how they’re meant to live: growing up stuck inside in dark and filthy industrial buildings, never able to feel the grass beneath their feet, and never able to stretch their wings.
Brandon Septor is a local farmer that runs Sovereignty Farm, located in Rock Spring, Georgia. Sovereignty Farm sells their sustainable food products all over Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas. It is a beautiful 15 acre farm with a creek wrapped around the property. These chickens are not debeaked, or heavily selectively bred, nor do they go through forced molting. In contrast to factory farming, nothing goes to waste. Their egg layers usually live around two years. After that, they sell the birds for meat; nothing is wasted, Septor says. All of their chickens, both egg layers and meat birds, are free range throughout the day. At night they are put in a coop in order to protect them from predators. These coops are constantly moved around every couple of days so that they can have full access to fresh grass and bugs. Additionally, they are fed good local non GMO feed. Sovereignty Farm doesn’t use any chemicals or sprays. The birds at Sovereignty Farm are free to live their lives the way they are intended to: free to roam the earth, be as social as they please, eating healthy food, with no chemical interference.
When asked about chicken factories, Septor’s tone became melancholy. Speaking about the chickens, he said, “It’s a pretty disgusting way to live. That’s what I feel most about it is that it’s just gross. You see the feces hanging off the back of the trucks. And the birds don’t look well kept at all.”
Septor acknowledges that we need factory farming to an extent, simply because of how many people there are to feed, but that we have to do it better. He believes that once a chicken's health is altered to the point that they can’t support themselves because of how heavy their chests are, or when they’re breaking their legs trying to stand up, all for the purpose of more meat and more money, factory farming has obviously gone too far. Septor sighed, put his blonde head down and said, “Chickens are the cheapest meat to feed at a large scale… but in order to get it so cheap there’s tradeoffs, and people don’t want to talk about those tradeoffs.” These tradeoffs of course include, selective breeding, forced molting, debeaking, and overall miserable lives for the animal.
Septor and his family do their part by providing an alternative--kinder and more sustainable option of getting eggs and meat. He leaned back in his truck and said, “I mean, what I’m doing here isn’t even a drop in the bucket of change. But it’s still something.”
Chickens are meant to live long lives surrounded by grass and bugs, not confined within a factory, unable to ever feel the sunlight on their backs. Chickens can both produce and be great food. But that is not their sole purpose. They shouldn’t have a fulfilling life ripped right out in front of them for the mere dollar or chicken breast. Chickens can be used for food at the same time as being given a good life. This is seen at Septor’s farm, where chickens are able to live a happy healthy life outside. People should treat chickens with much more respect and kindness. Chickens are here for our food, so we should treat them well while they are alive. As they serve us for food, we should serve them with the good life they deserve.
Works Cited
Bolotnikova, Marina, and Kenny Torrella. “9 charts that show US factory farming is even bigger than you realize.” Vox, 26 February 2024, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24079424/factory-farming-facts-meat-usda-agriculture-census. Accessed 25 November 2024.
“Chicken Selective Breeding: What Is It & What Are The Risks?” The Humane League, 29 November 2022, https://thehumaneleague.org/article/chicken-selective-breeding. Accessed 25 November 2024.
“Factory-Farmed Chickens: The Cruelty of Chicken Farms.” The Humane League, 19 January 2021, https://thehumaneleague.org/article/factory-farmed-chickens. Accessed 25 November 2024.
World Animal Protection US. “10 Things to Know About Factory-Farmed Chickens.” World Animal Protection, 5 January 2022, https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/10-things-know-about-factory-farmed-chickens/#:~:text=A%20factory%2Dfarmed%20chicken%20lives,babies%20when%20they%20are%20slaughtered. Accessed 20 November 2024.
コメント