Though chicken is a staple in most people's everyday diet, the chicken industry is a dark and dirty place, plagued with abuse, carelessness, and greed. This negatively affects the chickens, farmers, plant workers, and consumers to the point where chicken are no longer always a healthier alternative to beef. The chickens suffer abuse, the farmers are indebted to the industry, the workers are given poor working environments and unsafe jobs, and the consumer gets cheated and is fed infected meat.
It has not always been this way. Originally, chickens were raised on small family farms. They were cared for, grown, and slaughtered by the same hands, then immediately sent to the local groceries so the consumer could go buy a clean, local bird, take it home, and cook it for dinner. The chickens took longer to grow and were healthier because they were allowed their natural growth and egg-laying cycles. The birds were not given growth hormones, they were not mass produced. The industry was not nearly as economically efficient – and that is where the corruption began.
The idea behind a factory farm is simple – more birds mean more money. More money means higher pay, which should mean better jobs and better working conditions. More profit means cheaper chicken for the consumers. Fewer resources are used, since more birds can be kept on a smaller portion of land, sharing utilities, living space, food, etc. Factory farms, in theory, are good for everyone.
[...] Why you should be chicken about Chicken? Though chicken is a staple in most people's everyday diet, the chicken industry is a dark and dirty place, plagued with abuse, carelessness, and greed. This negatively affects the chickens, farmers, plant workers, and consumers to the point where chicken are no longer always a healthier alternative to beef. The chickens suffer abuse, the farmers are indebted to the industry, the workers are given poor working environments and unsafe jobs, and the consumer gets cheated and is fed infected meat. [...]
[...] It may or may not be anyone from your hometown, so there is no incentive to maintain sanitation standards or any general sense of decency and respect for the consumer. In his book Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food, Steve Striffler, an anthropologist, documents the shocking facts about the chicken industry today. First, he talks about the abuse of the chickens. Second, Striffler documents the conditions of the workers at chicken plants. Third, he documents the enslavement of the farmers that raise the chickens. [...]
[...] The chicken industry's treatment of chickens, farmers, workers, and the natural environment is unethical and should be illegal. It is unethical how these birds are treated. It is unethical how these workers and growers are treated. Chicken farmers and workers should be treated like human beings, not like cogs in the wheel of industry. Chickens should be treated with the ethical rights that are given to any living creature. The environment should be respected and should have lawyers on standby for when it is not. [...]
[...] Print. Vegucated. Dir. Marissa M. Wolfson. Perf. Marisa Miller Wolfson, Brian Flegel, Tesla Lobo, Ellen Mausner, Mark Mausner. Kind Green Planet/Get Vegucated Netflix. [...]
[...] but poor chickens are nowhere to be found (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). Even though all of the chickens in question will wind up as food, the torture they are put through is not justified. In the plants, chickens are hung upside down, alive, to be sent to die. A scalding bath is expected to paralyze, but not stun or kill, the birds, so they are alive during the whole process. Often, the bath is ineffective, rendering them fully conscious during their slaughter. [...]
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