The meat I hate to love

The one element in our garden I've found by far the most enjoyable, is the chooks. We got our two Australorps last September so over the last five months we've been able to enjoy not just fresh eggs but also watching the hilarious creatures. They really are a delight to watch doing the "chicken thing". They cluck about the yard with their heads held high, peck in the grass, dig holes to sit in, eat anything they can get their beak on and hop around merrily all day.

The welfare of chickens that produce eggs is something we've all heard a lot about over the last several years and that was a big part of why we got our chooks; we eat lots of eggs. It's pretty general knowledge these days that egg-producing cage chickens live in very high density, are unable to go outside and are literally just stressed and unhappy egg making machines. We had nothing but good reasons to stop buying into that unneccessary cruelty and have our own birds. After a bit of research I'm disappointed to discover that Free Range Eggs actually only represent 11% of the Australian egg market. Even with that small figure, it is certainly an area that the consumer has led the market through their buying choices though--not long ago there were no Free Range options on our shelves at all. 

All that aside, that isn't what I've, yet again, become disillusioned to discover. The other night I recommended a book to a lady on the green4me facebook page called The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. It's about how food is produced. I have skimmed it many times before looking for specific info but never sat down to read it cover-to-cover. Anyway, I started it on Friday night and have found it to be unputdownable, similar to a Patricia Cornwell book of horrors.

I've finished the chapter on the farming of meat chickens--that's what people who produce chicken meat call what they do--farming. I'll refer to the unethical model I'm about to describe as production from here on, as my definition of a farm involves the sky, being able to wander around in the sun and grass.

Anyway, I read about it and was disgusted that meat animals are produced this way. At the time though, I honestly did think, 'it's an American book, we'd have better standards here.' This morning though, I've researched our own industry and, as yet, haven't managed to find a difference whatsoever.

So, where does our chicken meat come from?

Chicken's lives start in a hatchery where fertilised eggs are incubated and hatched (isn't this just the picture of nature and romance?). 




After they've hatched they are sexed and the weak birds are destroyed at under 24 hours old without leaving the hatchery. Their killing methods are a bit hush-hush but the chicks tend to have their heads chopped off.

After this, the chooks are shipped to the growers who put them in sheds like the one pictured. Here, they are grown as quickly as science will allow. They're pumped full of hormones, antibiotics and the lighting is closely monitored so the chooks can see what they're doing long enough to eat and drink but not long enough to fight with each other (meat birds are notoriously nasty).


 Back in the 1970s it took just under 70 days to produce a chicken big enough for slaughter. These days, with thanks to all the artificial crap we pump into them, they're ready to go in 32 days. Sadly, by the time the chooks are harvest size they're so overcrowded that they will always be touching another chicken. 

 
 I'm assuming this photo is meant to make us feel better about the way chicken meat is produced as it was released by the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc.. Granted I can't see any deformity in the chickens, but look at the size of the shed above... if nothing else these chooks are seriously overcrowded! 


This is what the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc. has to say about the issue of overcrowding: "Density is not the most critical issue in determining bird welfare.  Research has shown that it is the way that the environment in which the flock is managed, rather than the amount of space that each bird has, that is most critical."
Cop out much? 

Nearing harvest time chickens will also have put on so much weight on the breast they're vertebrae will often crack, leaving them in horrific pain and paralysed, unable to access food and water. These birds will ultimately starve to death in a frenzy of distressed chaos. Another sad fact is the poo. The sheds are only cleaned out after each harvest so the birds live their whole lives walking then lying in their own poop. As chook poo decomposes it releases amonia which causes painful blisters on the breast, respiratory problems and stings the eyes--often causing blindness. In their book, Singer and Mason suggest meat chickens spend at least 20% of their lives in severe and chronic pain.


After they leave the broiler (growing) sheds chooks are carted unceremoniously to the slaughter houses. The slaughter is too horrific to even fathom so I'm not going to go into it but I will recognise that we use the same slaughter methods as the US where they have machines do it all for them. These fallible machines though, are often responsible for failing the first two steps of the process--the stunning and killing--and so these poor defenseless bastards are plunged into vats of boiling water, alive and conscious, to boil and drown to death. American industry reports suggests this happens to about 3 million of their birds a year. Not surprisingly, Aussie info like this isn't easy to come by.


So, it turns out that being between gardens for me is not going well for the food producers of Australia. Instead of digging, composting, planting and harvesting I've had time on my hands to research the environmental and moral impacts of my consumer choices. In the space of a week I'm off dairy and vowing to NEVER buy chicken meat again unless it has at least been certified by FREPA (Free Range Egg & Poultry Australia Ltd).

Our girls.

I'm just happy that right now my girls are outside in their clean little house perched above fresh straw, with the door open, and free to eat and drink as much as they like and go where they choose in the yard.


 I've definitely got more to think about in terms of our own self-sufficiency and sustainability project... the meat chickens and the milking goat might have to wait until our next house upgrade though!