(no subject)
I'm currently reading this book, Eating Animals by Johnathan Safran Foer, who wrote Everything Is Illuminated.
It's not a book stating, "Hey! Don't eat meat!" He just wanted to get all the facts right and get it out to everyone about what they're eating and make their own choice. I'm not going to become a vegetarian by any means, but I just may stop eating chicken.
I know, I know, I know... factory farming is very bad. They treat the animals badly, there's far too much suffering, the animals are fed chemicals and rapid-growth hormones which cause deformities... but what I've been reading in this book is quite disturbing.
Here's a couple excerpts:
Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms. Scientific studies and governmental records suggest that 95 percent of chickens become infected with E. coli (fecal contamination) and between 40 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected.
Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right--how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste?--but the birds will be injected with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken taste.
After the birds' heads are pulled off and their feet removed, machines open them with a vertical incision and remove their guts. Contamination often occurs here, as the high-speed machines commonly rip open their intestines, releasing feces into the birds' body cavities. The inspector has approximately two seconds to examine each bird inside and out, both the carcass and the organs, for more than a dozen different diseases and suspect abnormalities. Every week, reports of millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors, or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers.
It's not a book stating, "Hey! Don't eat meat!" He just wanted to get all the facts right and get it out to everyone about what they're eating and make their own choice. I'm not going to become a vegetarian by any means, but I just may stop eating chicken.
I know, I know, I know... factory farming is very bad. They treat the animals badly, there's far too much suffering, the animals are fed chemicals and rapid-growth hormones which cause deformities... but what I've been reading in this book is quite disturbing.
Here's a couple excerpts:
Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms. Scientific studies and governmental records suggest that 95 percent of chickens become infected with E. coli (fecal contamination) and between 40 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected.
Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right--how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste?--but the birds will be injected with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken taste.
After the birds' heads are pulled off and their feet removed, machines open them with a vertical incision and remove their guts. Contamination often occurs here, as the high-speed machines commonly rip open their intestines, releasing feces into the birds' body cavities. The inspector has approximately two seconds to examine each bird inside and out, both the carcass and the organs, for more than a dozen different diseases and suspect abnormalities. Every week, reports of millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors, or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers.