Chickens Are Not Supposed To Weigh Fifteen Pounds
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As part of the VegNews Book Club, I’m reading Animal Camp by Kathy Stevens.
So far, this is the first book in the book club that has not been available at my local library and/or in an electronic version, and so I bought the book. It’s not the kind of book I would normally buy. It’s just a little too cheerful and a simple for my taste. However, Stevens scatters bits of more serious material throughout the book, such as this bit from page 112:
“Chickens, you see, aren’t supposed to weigh fifteen pounds. But those that miraculously escape slaughter do weigh that much, often more. Agribusiness has created ‘Frankenbirds’ – chickens that grow at freakishly rast rates (greater profits for the producer) yet have such high death rates that agribusiness itself has created the term ‘flip-over syndrome’ because it finds so many young chickens lying on their backs, feet pointed skyward, dead from violent heart attacks because their hearts simply can’t take the rapid growth.” [...]
“Yet we humans continue to eat them. Tortured birds, caged pigs, terrorized cows. Under agribusiness, the tiniest concessions to their well-being are long gone. These animals are commodities, period. It doesn’t matter that they suffer mightily. It doesn’t matter that they are so very much like us, or that pain is pain and suffering is suffering whether it it inflicted to a human or a dog or a chicken. It feels the same, doesn’t it, no matter what one’s species?”
I know I’m not supposed to be partial to any particular species… But darn if chickens/birds don’t get the short and rotten end of the stick every time. Totally violated animals at ever turn – And yet… with bones filled with air they are the most delicate creatures. So sad that we (humans) treat these fragile beings with such a very heavy hand.