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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (102559)	4/30/2005 3:11:08 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Well thank you very much for watching the video. I really appreciate your taking the time to do that. In response to your comments, the chickens are fed growth hormones that make them grow twice as fast as chickens do naturally. There are far more lame birds than one in thousands. The article I am copying below from a British site puts the figure at 6% of English factory farmed chickens. It would be hard to imagine that the percentages for America are any less. Scientific studies have been done about how the birds choose feed with more painkillers in it as they get progressively more lame, so I am sure it is a significant problem. Not only that, but the chickens have their beaks and toes chopped off and are crammed into cages so small they can hardly move, and many of them die from the shock of all that chopping off of body parts without any painkillers. It would really matter to me if the chickens were treated more humanely. I think chickens should be allowed to do chicken things like flap their wings and dig in the dirt and experience sunlight and fresh air. Even if they were eventually killed humanely to be someone's dinner, they would not be stressed out and in agony every moment of their lives like the chickens most people eat every day. animalaid.org.uk Chickens In the wild, chickens spend their days pecking at the ground for food and dustbathing. But in modern poultry farms they are crammed by their thousands into dark sheds, unable to express their natural instincts. Chickens reared for meat are called 'broilers'. On average, a modern 'broiler' house holds around 45,000 birds but many units have populations exceeding 100,000. Put into the sheds when tiny chicks, by the end of their six week growing cycle the unnaturally large birds are squashed into severely cramped space. To get to the food and water points, the birds must push their way through a solid mass of other chickens but many do not make it. The severe over-crowding, coupled with the fact that the birds are fattened up so quickly that their legs may not be able to support their own bodies, means millions - around 6 per cent/approximately 42 million each year - collapse under the strain and die before they even reach slaughter weight. Their deaths are inconsequential to the poultry farmers who view the loss as an expected, and acceptable, part of their industry. Broiler chickens are vulnerable to a host of health problems including fatty livers and kidneys, heart attacks, septicaemia, and deformities caused by arthritis together with the stress of carrying so much weight on young bones. Because their growth rate is so rapid, their hearts and lungs struggle to maintain sufficient oxygen levels, resulting in breathlessness. They are pumped full of drugs to fend off infection and disease but their short lives are filled with pain and suffering.