Chicken Factory Farms
Behind The Scenes of Horrifying Chicken Factory Farms
When I was about ten years old I went on a vacation to Minnesota with my family. It was obvious, even to my young mind, that Minnesota had suffered a series of stormy weather conditions. My aunt explained that there had recently been a small tornado that had swept through the state. We spent several days touring the area to see the damage that had been caused. One particular thing that stuck in my mind was the damage that had been caused on a local small but mass producing chicken farm.
Everyone was amazed at the destruction that had been caused to the building itself. The tornado had completely ripped off the roof and the majority of the walls. What overwhelmed me the most, and I just couldn’t get over, was the amount of dead and live chickens scattered over the property. They were everywhere; there must have been hundreds or thousands of them. Besides the gloominess of the dead bodies, my first thoughts were, “How did all of those chickens fit into that tiny little building or did the tornado sweep away more buildings than just what we could see?” Even from a distance you could tell that there couldn’t possibly have been enough floor space for even half of them to be able to comfortably move around. They had to have been really crammed in there, practically stacked on top of one another. The other thing that occurred to me was the lack of concern over the carnage. To most people, they are just chickens and not really animals. This was the start of my curiosity about chicken farms and where the meat we consume comes from and how those birds are raised. After doing a great deal of research, and having raised 8-10 chickens of my own, I found that the facts were much more disturbing than I had expected. The chickens live in complete misery and many of them don’t even make it through their first 6 weeks of life. A University of Georgia’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Science (CAES)
When I was about ten years old I went on a vacation to Minnesota with my family. It was obvious, even to my young mind, that Minnesota had suffered a series of stormy weather conditions. My aunt explained that there had recently been a small tornado that had swept through the state. We spent several days touring the area to see the damage that had been caused. One particular thing that stuck in my mind was the damage that had been caused on a local small but mass producing chicken farm.
Everyone was amazed at the destruction that had been caused to the building itself. The tornado had completely ripped off the roof and the majority of the walls. What overwhelmed me the most, and I just couldn’t get over, was the amount of dead and live chickens scattered over the property. They were everywhere; there must have been hundreds or thousands of them. Besides the gloominess of the dead bodies, my first thoughts were, “How did all of those chickens fit into that tiny little building or did the tornado sweep away more buildings than just what we could see?” Even from a distance you could tell that there couldn’t possibly have been enough floor space for even half of them to be able to comfortably move around. They had to have been really crammed in there, practically stacked on top of one another. The other thing that occurred to me was the lack of concern over the carnage. To most people, they are just chickens and not really animals. This was the start of my curiosity about chicken farms and where the meat we consume comes from and how those birds are raised. After doing a great deal of research, and having raised 8-10 chickens of my own, I found that the facts were much more disturbing than I had expected. The chickens live in complete misery and many of them don’t even make it through their first 6 weeks of life. A University of Georgia’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Science (CAES)
Cited: Behind The Scenes of Horrifying Chicken Factory Farms "Chickens Used For Meat." Farm Sancuary. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar 2013. http://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/chickens-used-for-meat/. ("Chickens Used For Meat") "Chickens Used For Food." PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar 2013.