Monday, August 3, 2009

challenging chicken

I took a gander at Vegan News, "Episode 10 @ the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary"

A few things struck me.

1) These battered, molting, pathetic-looking chickens were rescued from a wide variety of "organic" and "free-range" or "cage-free" chicken farms. Also note that the sad chickens are much healthier in this video than when they first arrived to the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary.

2) The interviewers asks a great question. There are always those people who claim to know Aunty Emme and Uncle Joe with their happy healthy chickens on some magical happy healthy farm. What is wrong with taking their eggs? Isn't the egg just waste, something left behind?

The Peaceful Prairie representative (or owner or employee, not sure) explains that these allegedly happy chickens still come from hatcheries, where roosters are automatically slaughtered. And as soon as the hens have (over) produced as many eggs as possible, they are slaughtered as well.

3) Hens are forced to produce such an unnatural amount of eggs during their lives that they become nutrient deficient.

4) Interesting fact: chickens eat the content of their own unfertilized eggs because of the rich nutrients inside. Because so many of the chickens at Peaceful Prairie have been de-beaked and mutilated, PP caretakers will break some eggs open for the chickens (who chooowwww down. had no idea)

Note: chickens are de-beaked in order to prevent them from pecking each other to death out of craziness from hyper-confinement and torture, and also to keep them from breaking open and eating their own eggs.

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