Poultry

Chicken and Egg Farming:  Abusive & Unhealthy Industries

Approximately 9 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat each year in the United States.  The industry refers to these chickens as “broilers” and raises them in huge, ammonia-filled, windowless sheds where artificial lighting is manipulated to make birds eat as often as possible.  They are denied all that is natural and important to them and abused in ways that would be illegal if done to dogs and cats. Although 96 percent of Americans oppose cruelty to animals, there are no federal laws to protect chickens from abuse. 

Chickens raised and killed for their flesh are bred and drugged to grow so large so fast that many become crippled under their own weight and are unable to reach food or water. Many chickens die of heart attacks, suffocation, starvation, or stress-related illness. Survivors are forced to live among the corpses of other chickens in dark, crowded, excrement-filled sheds. The ammonia in the air burns their eyes and lungs, and many suffer from pneumonia and cancer. At slaughter, chickens’ throats are cut, and they are dunked into tanks of scalding- hot water, often while they are still conscious.

To keep up with demand and reduce production costs, genetic selection and a steady dose of growth-promoting drugs are used to ensure large, fast-growing birds.

Chicken is NOT a Health Food:

Chicken flesh today has three times as much fat as it did just 35 years ago, as much cholesterol as beef, and no fiber. And eating chicken also means eating poison: The most toxic form of arsenic is used in animal feed, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that just 2 ounces of chicken may contain as much as 5.2 micrograms of arsenic—as little as 10 micrograms per day can lead to skin, respiratory, and bladder cancers.

“A 2004 Department of Agriculture study on arsenic concluded that "the higher than previously recognized concentrations of arsenic in chicken combined with increasing levels of chicken consumption may indicate a need to review assumptions regarding overall ingested arsenic intake.”

"When this source of arsenic is added to others, the exposure is cumulative, and people could be in trouble," said Dr. Ted Schettler, a physician and the science director at the Science & Environmental Health Network, founded by a consortium of environmental groups.  Those at greatest risk from arsenic are small children and people who consume chicken at a higher rate than what is considered average: two ounces per day for a 154-pound person. The good news for consumers is that arsenic-free chicken is more readily available than it has been in the past, as more processors eliminate its use.  Tyson Foods, the nation's largest chicken producer, has stopped using arsenic in its chicken feed.  But there are still plenty of chickens out there with arsenic. “

            From The New York Times:  By Marian Burros, April 5, 2006


Kentucky Fried Chicken Sued for Fouling Chicken with Partially Hydrogenated Oil (Trans Fats) by the Center for Science in the Public Interest
Lawsuit Aimed at Eliminating, or Disclosing Use of Artery-Clogging Frying Oil

“The filed suit against the fast-food giant over its use of partially hydrogenated oil--the chemically altered, trans-fat-laden oil that kills roughly 50,000 Americans per year. The class action suit, filed in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, asks that the court prohibit KFC from using partially hydrogenated oil, or that at the very least, signs be posted in KFC outlets notifying customers that many KFC foods are high in trans fat.

Trans-fat levels at KFC vary widely around the world. According to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, KFC chicken and potato products in Spain, Portugal, and Denmark have far less trans fat than they do in the United States, Peru, or Poland, for instance. (Hungary had the most). Denmark restricts the use of trans fat from hydrogenated oils to 2 percent of the fat in foods.

A typical 3-piece Extra Crispy combo meal, with a drumstick, two thighs, potato wedges, and a biscuit has a staggering 15 grams of trans fat-more trans fat than an individual should consume in a week.

Once thought to be innocuous, trans fat is now known to be more harmful than saturated fat, since it simultaneously raises one's LDL cholesterol, which promotes heart disease.” 
            From:  http://cspinet.org/new/200606121.html

Battery Cages:

About 245 million hens are raised for eggs in the U.S., and 98% spend their lives in battery cages.

“95% of eggs produced in the U.S. come from hens raised in factory farms that use battery cages to house the hens.  This intensive confinement system is so inhumane it has been banned in many European countries and will be phased out of the entire European Union by 2012.  in the U.S., where consumers are just beginning to learn about factory farms, the push for more humane and more environmentally sustainable alternatives has only recently gathered momentum.

In the U.S., egg-laying hens are raised in sheds the length of football fields, with battery cage operations housing roughly 80,000 hens.  Up to ten hens are crowded into a barren wire cage so small that the birds can’t spread their wings.  Each bird is afforded less space than a single sheet of paper on which to live, leading to high levels of stress and injury.  Cages are stacked one on top of another, with the waste of the birds above dropping down onto the birds in cages below.  Because of the low value of egg-laying hens, no individual veterinary care is given.  Sick and dead birds are common sights inside battery cages.  In the U.S., approximately 300 million hens are raised this way each year.

Environmental problems associated with battery cages facilities include water, air, and soil pollution.  These operations also produce dangerous amounts of ammonia (from animal waste) and other gases that pollute the air.

A growing number of educated consumers opt to avoid eggs altogether.  Others prefer to support local producers at area farmers markets who offer eggs from pasture-raised hens.”

From June 2006 Tennes-Sierran, page 3 – by Susan Prolman: True Cost of Food Campaign Director for Washington, DC Chapter of Sierra Club.


At the age of one to two years, their overworked bodies decline in egg production and they are slaughtered (chickens would normally live 15-20 years).

          Mason, Jim and Peter Singer, Animal Factories , p. 5.
 

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