Chickens almost jinxed our move to Colorado back in June of 1964.
Earlier that spring, news came that Bill and I had the chance to transfer from Hewlett-Packard in California to HP in Loveland.
“It will be so great,” Bill said. “It’s a small town — only about 10,000 people — and we can raise our own chickens and have them for Sunday dinner.”
I almost choked and started coughing at the mention of killing chickens.
Colorado sounded wonderful, but killing chickens set me off. I wanted neatly packaged chicken from a supermarket.
While Bill had fond memories of his Mom cooking Sunday dinner from a chicken from their yard, I was glad our marriage vows didn’t include anything about chickens. Or was this the “worse” part of “for better or for worse”?
By the time we arrived in Loveland, Bill had forgotten about raising chickens and I bought tidily packaged chicken from Westlake Market.
Fast forward five decades. Chickens still come in neat packages in the supermarket. But their journey from birth to arrival at the supermarket is now torturous.
By contrast to today’s factory-farmed chickens, Bill’s family-raised chickens lived in humane conditions. Yes, they were eventually killed, but led relatively peaceful lives until death.
Factory-farmed chicken are “franken-creatures that balloon in size at a metastatic rate: If people grew as fast as a broiler chicken did, they would weigh nearly 700 pounds by the time they were 2 months old,” according to an article in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/human-cost-chicken-farming/601687/.
Factory chickens live tortured lives, many with broken bones, unable to walk, standing in filth.
If you are repulsed by this situation, you’re not alone. Poultry farmers are also disgusted. Yet, they feel trapped.
To sell poultry, farmers contract with large agribusinesses to raise stock according to corporate specifications and take out huge loans to build specified poultry warehouses.
Many farmers are crushed under loans they cannot cancel. Three-quarters of these farmers live below the poverty level.
While factory farming is efficient and cost-effective, it has taken a human toll as well as a toll on poultry.
The situation is complex. Readers, what do you think will help?
(Full disclosure: Now I mostly eat a plant-based diet. And in the 1970s Bill bought a pet chicken and a pet duck. They never landed on a dinner plate.)
