chickens

By Deb Young

Factory farming is built on an attitude that regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit.

Corporations have turned family-farming methods into cost-saving, mass-production strategies, which endanger public health and treat animals cruelly.

Also known as large confined animal feeding operations factory farms treat animals like production units, and the result is poor food quality for you, and inhumane conditions for the animals.

Consider some of the ingredients commonly used in factory-farmed animal feed:

Excessive grains, fed to animals designed to eat grass

Plastic pellets, fed to animals as “roughage” because the factory diet doesn’t contain natural fiber

Meat from their own species, turning farm animals into cannibals (this practice has also been linked to the spread of mad cow disease)

Animal byproducts, such as feathers, blood, intestines, euthanized cats and dogs, and road kill

Drugs and chemicals, including antibiotics (an estimated 13.5 million pounds each year) and antimicrobials (which promote the accumulation of arsenic in chickens)
Antibiotics fed to factory-farmed animals are so grossly overused that they are contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the United States.

Approximately 95% of factory-raised animals are subject to deplorable conditions such as overcrowding, hunger, thirst, and sometimes-fatal weather extremes. Many times, they are kept conscious or even skinned alive during the process of slaughtering.

“Free-range” evokes a positive image of chickens, turkeys and cows living outdoors with plenty of fresh air, sunshine and open space to roam in.

Animals raised for meat may be sold as “free-range” if they have government certified access to the outdoors. The door may be open for only five minutes and the farm still qualifies as “free-range.” Apart from the “open door,” no other criteria such as environmental quality, number or space per animal, are included in the term “free-range.”

Free-range hens are typically debeaked as chicks at the hatchery . Debeaking is a painful facial mutilation that impairs a hen’s ability to eat normally and preen her feathers. Typically, 2,000 to 20,000 or more hens – each hen having one square foot of living space the size of a sheet of paper – are confined in a shed with little or no access to the outdoors. If the hens can go outside, the exit is often very small, allowing only the closest hens to get out. And the “range” may be nothing more than a mudyard saturated with manure

Sadly the public is led to believe that ‘Cage-Free” animals live a happy, natural life, this is simply not so!

When you buy “free-range” or not – you support an industry that exploits and abuses animals in an absolutely horrifying way.

Buyer Beware! Know where your food comes from and how it got to your table.

Let’s get moving, Worcester! Here is former Worcester City Councilor Barbara Haller’s informative piece on rasing chickens in Worcester! – R. Tirella

Responsible Chicken Ordinance perhaps coming to Worcester soon: An answer to the age old question: Which came first – the chicken or the egg?

By Barbara Haller

In the interest of full disclosure, I once raised chickens. In one case it was while living at a farm-school in Pettigrew, Arkansas and in the other it was while raising my family in the town of Holland, Massachusetts. I love chickens. My kids love chickens. And I can’t wait to raise chickens once again.

Right now it is against the law to have chickens in Worcester. This means that if you go ahead and raise some and someone complains you will be ordered to get rid of them. It also means that if some city person comes to your home or a nearby neighbor for some other reason (noisy party, barking dog, wellness check, etc.) and the chickens are seen that you will be ordered to get rid of them.

The idea of making chickens legal in Worcester has been around for a long time. But nobody got serious about it till a couple of years ago. Kristi Chadwick contacted me and asked for me to help get an ordinance effort going. We now call her the Mother Hen. Kristi did mounds of research about other communities’ ordinance successes and failures. She crafted a draft ordinance, and revised it, and revised it, over and over, as we worked to come up with the best chicken ordinance ever. We wanted a Responsible Chicken Ordinance, one that could get enacted and that protected quality of life for chickens and neighbors.

For many of us, this is not about if we get a chicken ordinance, but rather when we get one. This is happening across the country as more citizens want to participate in growing and controlling their own food, increase quality of their food, reduce transportation pollutions, and educate their children about where food comes from. On top of this, many find this kind of grassroots agriculture as fun and healthy.

Los Angeles, Rogers AK, Key West, South Portland ME, Madison, New York City, Portland OR, Seattle and Spokane WA, San Antonio, Oakland and San Diego and San Francisco CA, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, and many, many more towns and cities now allow chickens. Providence passed her ordinance last fall.

Along the way, word got out about this effort and others joined in. My Clark intern in 2010, Lilly Denhardt, did some research. Mayor Joe O’Brien joined. Regional Environmental Council (REC) joined. Casey Starr joined. Joe Scully joined. Liz Sheehan Castro joined. Peggy Middaugh joined. By this spring, the effort definitely had momentum and it was time to move it into the Council process.

A group of us met with the Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Dale Magee, and the Director of Public Health, Derek Brindisi, and went over the proposed ordinance, section by section, and listened to concerns raised. More revisions were made; the text was put in cleaner ordinance format.

Our ordinance allows for up to 5 chicken hens. No roosters, no slaughtering, no selling. Property owner’s permission is required. Backyards only. Annual license. City-approved coop. Outside only. At least twenty feet from neighbor’s house. Fenced enclosure.

Word continued to spread. More people joined in support. On June 14, 2011 Mayor O’Brien and I filed a council order requesting that the City Manager provide council with language similar to our draft ordinance which would allow for the keeping of chicken hens in Worcester. The request was sent to the Council’s Standing Committee of Public Health and Human Services for further discussion and recommendation. Councilor Phil Palmieri chairs this committee; the other two members are Councilor Konnie Lukes and myself.

The process is likely to be as follows: Councilor Palmieri schedules a hearing. Testimony is taken from the public, from city officials from Animal Control, Public Health, Planning Department (land use), and the Law Department. There may be more committee hearings scheduled, depending on the issues raised. At some point the committee will make a recommendation back to the full council: in favor, opposed, or in favor as amended by committee. Then the council will take a vote to support the committee’s recommendations or not. Six votes are needed. Members of the council could raise additional questions, could hold it for a week or forever. If we get the votes we need, the ordinance would be published for additional comments and then the final vote taken.

So, we have a way to go yet. But with strong advocacy and engagement we could have spring chicks 2012. (Rule is: Spring chicks, September eggs.) Hopefully we will soon answer the question “which came first.” For Worcester, many of us want the answer to be “the chicken.”

I believe that we have crafted a responsible and workable ordinance that will make Worcester a better place. If you want a copy of the proposed ordinance, want to join the effort, have questions or want to let me know how you feel, get in touch!

Cluck on!

By Rosalie Tirella

… She thanked me for the support I gave to her get-the-pink-slime-out-of-our-school-meat lunches crusade.

As you all know, we have taken ol’ Tracy to the wood shed for her not-so-smart (some would say brutal) crusade to fire WPSchools Superintendent Dr. Melinda Boone, Worcester’s first female African American superintendent. Dr. Boone cares about kids and knows her stuff.

But I digress … .

I want to say: When it comes to animals/factory farming/vegetarianism (and inner-city kids’ health), anyone who comes out in favor of the animals/kids, gets a thumbs up from us.

We have written (for a decade) about the brutal living conditions of cows, chickens, all “farm animals” often literally stacked in huge, concrete, sunlight deprived, fresh-air deprived, warehouses. Torture chambers – not farms.

The insanity must stop.

If WPS committee member Tracy Novick makes it her mission to create MEATLESS MONDAY’s in our public schools, reduces the amount of meat WPSchools students are eating, works to get our school buyers to work with organic farms where animals are allowed to roam freely in meadows, etc, before they meet their Maker, then she has our support.

If Novick can bring in vegetarian dishes – or at least get city leaders to see meat as a garnish, as opposed to a main dish – then she can run for President of the USA and we will give her free ads until she wins.

This issue is so dear to my heart!

So I say: Good job, Tracy Novick!

************** AND HERE ARE SOME GREAT STORIES ON ANIMALS  ….

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us/death-and-disarray-at-americas-racetracks.html?_r=1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/isle-royale-gray-wolves_n_1352568.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/aqueduct-horse-track-deaths-cuomo-letter-luck-hbo_n_1353724.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/alec-baldwin-peta-ad-elephant_n_1353790.html

By Lindsay Pollard-Post

The White House recently announced that its annual Easter Egg Roll event will feature “green” eggs. They’ll come in a variety of pastel colors, but they’ll all be “green” because they’ll be made from Forest Stewardship Council–certified hardwood and packaged in environmentally friendly materials. Not only are these eggs better for the environment, they’re also better for chickens. Everyone who celebrates Easter can follow the White House’s lead and be green, not mean, by choosing faux eggs instead of chicken eggs this spring.

For hens who are forced to lay eggs, Easter is nothing to celebrate. Most of the eggs that Americans dye and decorate for the holiday come from chickens who are confined to filthy factory farm sheds containing row upon row of tiny, multitiered wire cages.

These hens spend their lives crammed into cages with four to 10 other birds. Each bird’s average living space is smaller than a letter-sized sheet of paper. Hens on egg factory farms never breathe fresh air, feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or engage in any of their natural behaviors.

They can’t even stretch a single wing.

The birds are crammed so closely together that these normally clean animals are forced to urinate and defecate on one another.

The stench of ammonia from the accumulated feces under the birds saturates the air and burns the birds’ feathers. Disease runs rampant in the filthy, cramped sheds. Many birds die, and the survivors are often forced to live with their dead and dying cagemates, who are sometimes left to rot.

Due to extreme crowding, stress and boredom, the miserable hens peck at the only thing available: each other. Farm workers “solve” this problem by slicing off a portion of each hen’s sensitive beak with a hot blade—without giving the birds any painkillers. Many birds, unable to eat because of the pain, die from dehydration and weakened immune systems.

The light in the sheds is constantly manipulated in order to maximize egg production. Periodically, the hens’ calorie intake is restricted for two weeks at a time in order to force their bodies into an extra laying cycle. When hens are “spent” and their egg production drops at about two years of age, they’re sent to slaughter, where their throats are cut open while they’re still conscious.

Meanwhile, male chicks are considered worthless to the egg industry because they don’t produce eggs and are too small to profitably be used for their flesh. So every year, millions of male birds are thrown into macerators and ground up alive or tossed into trash bags to slowly suffocate.

Luckily, kids don’t care whether their Easter eggs came from a chicken. Having fun and spending time with family and friends is what matters, and neither of these requires real eggs.

Most craft stores sell paper or wooden eggs that are perfect for painting or decorating with crayons, stickers, glitter or markers. They are mess-free and won’t crack if dropped, and kids can display them for as long as they’d like because, unlike real eggs, they won’t rot. For kids who are dying to dye something, making tie-dyed T-shirts is always a hit.

Brightly colored plastic eggs are ideal for Easter egg hunts. They can be filled with candy, small toys, coins, stickers, love notes or any other small surprise you can imagine. They are inexpensive, can be reused year after year and are much more exciting for kids to find than a hard-boiled egg.

Real eggs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. This Easter, why not follow the First Family’s lead and have a first-class Easter celebration—without harming hens.

Lindsay Pollard-Post is a staff writer for The PETA Foundation.

By Bruce Friedrich

In his new book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, Pope Benedict XVI boldly and rightly condemns violence that is carried out in God’s name. Yet even devout Christians try to excuse themselves of their role in the horrific violence that is carried out against some of God’s most vulnerable creatures—the animals we raise and kill for food—by claiming that God has given us permission to do whatever we want to them.

God’s granting to humans “dominion” over animals in Genesis 1:26 is often falsely cited as divine approval for torturing animals for the table. Most theologians recognize that the word translated as “dominion” is more accurately translated as “stewardship” and that the meaning of this text is that humans are supposed to be stewards and guardians, protecting and respecting the beings with whom we share the gift of creation.

But all the questions (or excuses) that are put forth in favor of eating animals don’t address the fundamental fact that eating God’s creatures causes needless violence and suffering and is inextricably linked to their abuse. If you are eating meat, you’re paying others to deny God’s animals their own natures and to abuse them. Even the very few organic and small farms abuse animals in ways that would be illegal if done to dogs or cats.

Pope Benedict XVI stated in an interview that the question of animal treatment is a crucial one for the faithful. By any measure, what happens to farmed animals today is anti-Christian. As His Holiness explained, “Hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds.” Similar abuse occurs in all the farmed-animal industries. This “degrading of living creatures,” explains His Holiness, contradicts “the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.” Father John Dear, a Jesuit Priest from New Mexico, takes our responsibility to animals a step further, stating, “For the simple reasons that all animals are creatures beloved by God and that God created them with a capacity for pain and suffering, we should adopt a vegetarian diet.”

It doesn’t take much reflection to see that the Pope and Father Dear are right: God created humans and other animals out of flesh, blood and bone. We share the same five physiological senses and the ability to feel pain. God designed us this way. God designed pigs to root around in the soil for food and play with one another. God designed chickens to make nests, lay eggs, raise their chicks and establish communities (the “pecking order”).

Yet agribusiness today denies animals the fulfillment of their most fundamental needs. Agricultural scientists “play God” by manipulating animals to grow so quickly that their hearts, lungs and limbs can’t keep up, often causing heart attacks, lung failure or crippling leg deformities within weeks of birth. Chickens are crammed into cages by the hundreds of thousands, each with less space in which to live than a standard sheet of paper. During pregnancy, pigs are stuffed into tiny metal crates so small that they can’t even turn around. Forget rooting in the soil or laying their eggs in nests—these animals can barely move. The one natural thing they do get to experience is agony, and lots of it.

Scripture is full of calls for the faithful to be merciful, and Jesus’ message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about the industries that produce the farmed animals who are turned into meat. Christians have a choice: When we sit down to eat, we can support misery and violence or we can make choices that support mercy and compassion. The decision should be an easy one for us.

Bruce Friedrich is a vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

By Lindsay Pollard-Post

Every day, some of the most vulnerable females on Earth are confined against their will, denied the freedom to live as they please, sexually assaulted and even forcibly impregnated. As horrific as it sounds, we may be unwittingly funding and supporting this oppression—if we eat meat, eggs and dairy products.

PETA’s undercover investigations of factory farms and slaughterhouses have documented time after time that, in addition to the routine cruelty that occurs in these nightmarish facilities, workers often take their issues out on the animals imprisoned there by violently beating them, screaming at them and sexually assaulting them—sometimes in the animals’ terrifying last moments.

At a Hormel supplier’s farm in Iowa, for example, a supervisor (who was later convicted of livestock abuse) rammed a cane into a pig’s vagina and boasted that he had thrust gate rods into the anuses of pigs who frustrated him. At the same facility, another worker, who was also later convicted of livestock abuse, urged PETA’s investigator to beat a pig as if she had scared away a “voluptuous little f—ing girl.” The employee was also caught on video urging a supervisor to beat pigs and to expose his genitals to get them to move. Click to continue »

By Chris Holbein

As part of an effort to snuff out youth smoking, selling candy-, fruit- and spice-flavored cigarettes is now illegal in the U.S. The ban went into effect in September. Health officials say that flavored cigarettes make smoking more palatable to kids, and studies back them up: 17-year-olds are three times more likely to use flavored cigarettes than adults are.

This is certainly a step in the right direction. But if we’re serious about wanting to improve kids’ health, how about a ban on hot dogs and Happy Meals while we’re at it? The children who eat chicken nuggets and pepperoni pizza today will likely grow up to be the obese adults and heart patients of tomorrow. Click to continue »