Why did the chicken really cross the road?

Why did the chicken really cross the road?

Imagine, if you will, a place so crowded, so populated that you can't move. In fact, not only can you not move, but you have only 6 square inches of space in which to live for the whole amount of your short life. After your birth, you had half of your beak cut off, not surgically removed, mind you, but just snipped off with tin snips. That was one of the better moments.

Your life is not defined by the seasons, or daytime and nighttime, but by one long day that seemingly lasts forever. Artificial lighting and the constant feeding that you do, simply because you have nothing more to do than eat, mark out each moment. Your breif existance is often made shorter by diseases which are rampant in this unsanitary, overcrowded environment.

This is the reality of factory farming. These are the chicken nuggets we feed our children and the chicken enchiladas that we gobble up at Chili's on a Sunday afternoon.

A chicken in every pot was the dream of every American in the early part of the 20th century. Poultry back then was raised on real farms, cared for by hard working farmers that watched them for disease and culled the genetically weaker birds to create the healthiest stock possible. These men and women took pride in the animals they raised. Today chickens are genetically altered for rapid growth and abnormally large size. The birds often do not have the lung capacity to support thier weight, their legs are often useless, and huge numbers are lost due to congestive heart failure, cancer, infectious disease, and heat prostration.

If they do manage to make it to six weeks of age they are loaded in crates stacked one atop the other with no real protection from the elements. The industry expects a percentage to die during transport from freezing or heat.

At the slaughter house the chickens are hung, live, on a conveyor belt and dunked into electrified water to stun them before they are sent on down the line to have their throats slashed by a mechanical blade. Sometimes the blade is not spot on and the chicken is sent further down the line to the scalding pot still alive. This is not an unusual occurrence but happens many hundreds of time each day.

Even if the ethics of treating a live bird this way do not trouble you the health issues and lack of quality in the food should. Food born diseases are on the rise because of scenes like this played out all over the country, every single day. Organic farms may not be much better. Just because animal is fed organic feed does not mean it is not being factory raised. Even the title, free range , only means that the bird has limited access to the outside, perhaps a small dirt patch.

Now, imagine, if you will, a green pasture with healthy chickens chasing bugs, scratching in the spots of dirt and eating fresh grass. The birds are often heritage breeds, not genetically altered but in the best health they can be in, living within the cycles of night and day, and season to season. The chicken is free of antibiotics, vaccinations, growth simulators and other artificial ingredients added to it before it is even processed. As a side note the next time you read a "no artificial ingredients " on a poultry label don't believe it. That only means that there were none added after processing! The meat is full of hormones, antibiotics and other things you probably do not want in your body.

The meat that is raised ethically has a firmer flesh, more flavor, and a different smell than the commercially raised chickens. It is usually slaughtered on the farm or by a local butcher. The lack of adrenalin in the meat makes a difference as well. As any hunter knows, a clean kill is the first step to delicious meat.

So, the answer to why the chicken really did cross the road is obvious. It was escaping to the ethical farm across the street to be pasture raised.