Modern poultry farming can rob the animals — and farmers — of dignity.
By Adam Westbrook Video Producer |
There's an image I've struggled to get out of my mind for months. |
A chicken staggers listlessly on brown litter. Raw pink skin shows through a molting patchwork of yellow-stained feathers. |
And, for some reason, it's wet. A pink and orange slime drips down the chicken's neck as it pecks hopelessly at the dirt. |
This image did not come to me in a nightmare but when I began scrubbing through more than two hours of footage sent to The Times by Mercy for Animals, an animal rights organization. |
 | | Mercy for Animals |
|
The group's president, Leah Garcés, obtained rare legal access to a poultry farm in the United States last year. The industry doesn't want you to see images like this. They've gone as far as pushing laws that make filming on commercial farms a crime in some states. |
Many millions of chickens die in these conditions, and the ones that survive make it onto supermarket shelves and into some fast-food restaurants. |
The footage from Mercy for Animals shows chickens dying from the dire conditions, before they even get to the slaughterhouse. In fact, the mortality rate across the industry is about 5 percent. That is about 450 million chickens dying annually. |
"The farm, it could be in Georgia, it could be in Arkansas, it could be in Alabama," Leah told us, "anywhere where chickens are grown in the United States." More than 90 percent of all chickens raised for food in the U.S. are grown by farmers working under contract with large poultry producers. |
These conditions are the result of a decades-long effort to squeeze as much profit from broiler chicken as possible, a strategy that's proved lucrative for a handful of big companies while causing suffering for chickens and many of the farmers who raise them. |
Our aim is not to put you off chicken nuggets or to preach veganism. |
But it's important we all understand that cheap chicken, in fact, has a high cost. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
Contact us If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment