Guest Bloggers: Andrew Marston with Demytrius Smith (8th grade Boy Scouts)
The problem with intensive chicken farming:
You are what you eat.
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| New Hampshire Red Cockerels |
First to dispel a myth you may have heard. Chickens
aren’t injected with hormones, nor
are they fed them. However, there is estrogen (a hormone generally found to be
unhealthy in high amounts) found in chicken meat. How can this be?
The answer is simple: they are fed
feed with a large amount of soy in
it—and while contains phyto-estrogen. This results in estrogen in the chicken meat, which you
then eat.
But that isn’t what we are primarily
focusing on. Instead, we are focusing on something else: antibiotics.
Antibiotics are absolutely necessary in the modern intensive chicken farm, because
of how they are raised. The modern intensive chicken farm (popularly given the
derogatory name “factory farms”) is composed of a big shed, which is more like
a very large warehouse. Broiler (a type of meat bird) chickens are covering the
floor. Underneath them is their own waste. Thousands of chickens are just
sitting, standing, or even lying there.
These chickens are the breed Cornish
Cross. Cornish Cross seems to be bred for two things only: size and growth
rates. They grow huge so quickly that their organs and bones can’t keep up.
They have a very hard time standing,
and even then, they can’t hold the proud-looking, upright stance of a healthy
chicken. Their own body weight keeps them from standing, so they lie on the
floor (covered in their waste). They are also prone to open sores. Now the
bacteria, viruses, and other parasites can now enter their bodies, infecting
them. Plus, the close confinement of a lot of the same breed (monoculture)
spreads the infection very quickly among the stock.
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| Dominique 6 week old chicks |
This brings us back to why there are
antibiotics in their feed. Now, antibiotics aren’t in all intensive farm
chicken feed, but in quite a bit of it. "Around 70% of all antibiotics administered are used for livestock. Most of the drugs that are given to livestock are misused and incorporated into their diets daily for the purpose of weight gain or to treat illnesses." (Wikipedia.org) Now you may be thinking: “Well, when
they are not sick, then they don’t need the antibiotics.” Of course they don’t
need them then. But they still are given low doses of antibiotics that may or
may not be important to human use,
say, in saving lives from disease outbreaks.
Why is this important? It is because
of how bacteria survive. When bacteria are exposed to antibiotics of certain
types, the weaker ones die and the stronger ones can then multiply. Then when
exposed to more antibiotics, the weaker bacteria of the more resistant strain
are killed, and even stronger strains are made. This unintentional artificial
selection brings about antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
These new bacteria are called
“superbugs”. These superbugs may or may not then be transferred to humans
through the chicken meat, and now not only are the antibiotics transferred to you, possibly a few superbugs are
transferred too. And if these superbugs start infecting people, outbreaks can
occur. Now antibiotics once helpful in saving lives don’t work all the time.
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| Buff Rock cockerel "Romeo" |
What can you do? The answer is not
complex at all. It is a little saying called “Vote with your dollar”. And
unlike political voting, you don’t have to wait until voting day to vote with
your dollar. As the consumers, we can demand better chicken. How? You can vote
by literally demanding it, and also by buying local chicken. Grow your own if
you can. Encourage elimination of legislation restricting owning chickens in
your community.
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| Dominique pullets and cockerel |
Plus, you don’t need to grow all of
the chicken in the U.S.
with backyard hobby farms, either. For example, Joel Salatin grows thousands of chickens with his pastured
poultry system. And with their natural, organic food, it is healthier for them and they have normal growth rates. Make a difference by knowing where your chicken is from.
In the end antibiotics aren’t the only
issue with today’s intensive chicken farming system. There are many. But all I
am discussing here are those problems involving antibiotics. And remember the
my very first point: You are what you eat.
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| Buff Rock pullets |
