42-day wonders

[redhen]

this just makes me want to raise my own broilers more and more...

 

[mikarod]

Quote:
Exactly, birds who are not in the broiler operation are generally not processed as humanely as the broilers in a large operation. Like BossRoo said, how many of us can say that we stun our birds before slaughter? There are not many, but I will not go into depth on that. I'm sure several do, which has been evidenced in this discussion, but many more do not because they believe they are "just chickens"...which they are to a point. PurpleChicken posted a video a bit ago showing how to process a silkie, that bird wasn't stunned before chopping.

I will eat any chicken whether from the store, my house or from the UofA. Broilers have the most tender meat, whereas my chickens are just culls from my flock.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

I'm not sure you undestand what I was saying. They are stunned and a high percentage are killed before entering the scald water but there is a few that do make it live in the water. Machines malfunction it just happens.

I hate to be the one to tell you that it's not a law to stunn the chicken before you process it. It's just a prefrence and is now becoming a standard thanks to Peta and other groups that disagree with commercial slaughtering. But poultry along with rabbits are not apart of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act passed in 1958. Poultry is exempt from this, leaving it wide open on how to butcher your chicken. The reason why they stunn the birds is too make it easier on the machines. They could care less if the birds was cut consious or unconsious. If the bird would lay completely still when hung on the shackles why would they waste the money to put in an electic bath? They do this because the birds flop around too much in the shackles, breaking bones and often causing more money in damage to the meat. So the stunning was put in place to save money on broken bones.... not to relieve the stress of the bird.

It's funny because the site you posted even had a little spot on the cause side, that said that birds sometimes enter the scald live. ""****Dead birds on line (cadavers) Hangers too rough. Neck cutting malfunctioned. Live birds entered scalder. Check hanging, killing areas. ****""

It's part of the procedure... it's going to happen. All I'm saying is, you tend to value your own "broilers" that you raise for your consumption and perhaps your customers as well. If gives you something to be proud of. It gives you one more reason why your broilers that you raise are better then the ones in the store...

 

[Bossroo]

You choose which would you value more as better for you and your families' health and welfare.... on the one hand you have scientific research to develop an eficient converter of raw feedstuffs and protocal to account for every second of it's life from conception to the store shelf. Every phase of it's life is monitored by USDA, FDA, OSHA, State and Federal Vets, State and Federal Laboratory Pathologists,Nutritionists, Microbiologists, quality control personel, An array of animal rights groups,IRS, State and local politcians enacting their own standards, professional breeders,professional farm operators,professional crews, professional processors, the discriminating shopper, and an army of lawyers just waiting to file a law suit if you stub your toe in any step of your operation and on the other hand you have an individual keeping a chicken running around the homestead, exposed to every predator, pest, and pathogen, getting caught , killed, plucked by it's owner, family member or friend with no quality control or oversight. Only one's own pride of ownership and a job well done in their own mind.

 

[greyfields]

Yes, but it's also all entirely artificial. The economy consumes vast quantities of diesel fuel shipping grain for the midwest to these giant chicken farms. The grain farmer is getting paid rock-bottom prices, the chicken farmer is spending a majority of his feed costs in fossil fuels just to get the feed to his premises. He or she is then in a Contract where they are lucky to clear $0.12 per bird. The whole broiler industry was considered a modern marvel of food processing, but it's brutally unsustainable. As transportation prices continue to climb, it's going to be the grower who gets squeezed even more.

Why? Because people are addicted to $0.99/lb chickens from Wal*Mart. It will forever be viewed as cheap food, suitable for two people for one meal at most. And nearly everyone is living in denial about it. Less then 2% of broilers are raised in non-industrial conditions (free range, pastured, organic, etc.). Yet if you ask any consumer, they'd guess closer to 75% of the chicken they ate was. In reality, 98% of Americans have never had a free range chicken.

Currently in the UK there is a big public opinion push to lawfully mandate the end of broiler farms and require free range, organic or pastured production. High profile chefs like Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are proponents of the scheme and are promoting it. I sincerely hope they suceed and it becomes contagious.

 

[Brunty_Farms]

Well lets ask the customers who have bought birds from our farm and also from the grocery store... I think all 787 of them will beg to differ it's not a satisfaction that just I receive... there is a little more to it than butchering backyard culls... And a lot more too it than the sanitation in commercial processing of chickens.

Don't think just because our government is involved with large scale producers that it makes everything ok. There are countless of arguments and situations that show they are not doing things to the best of their abiltity. I think we can all agree that the standards in the poultry industry need to be raised just a bit. United States is actually further behind in standards than othe Nations. Take UK for example, they surpas us in every aspect of the poultry industry. Why? Their consumers demanded it. Japan for example has a ban on US imports on our beef.... Go figure...

 

[mikarod]

Quote:
And I hate to be the one to tell you, that in the procedures outlined by Tyson and George's, stunning is MANDATORY. The reason I posted the website was because it stated outcomes and causes. I know perfectly well that birds that do not die from the slitting in the allotted time will enter the scald tank alive. However, the processors have little to none of these considering the carcasses are unfit for human consumption. Since they are unfit for human consumption, they lose money on these carcasses. It only makes sense that the processors would then choose a time that allotted for all birds to be deceased before entering the scald tank. Again, not EVERY bird will enter the scald tank dead, because let's face it, not every bird is the same and not every bird will fit into the "average" death rate from slitting to scalding.

Did you not read the entire article? The stunning is ALSO done in order to decrease the rigidity of the carcass as well as aid in the bleeding procedure.

California has a law in place in order to ensure that poultry are stunned before processing:
http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stusca1245_1etseq.htm

Here are some other states with other information that do and do not include poultry:
http://www.animallaw.info/articles/ovusstatehumaneslaughtertable.htm

 

[onthespot]

I see no mention of the "broomstick method" in the content of the first link. Is this method considered inhumane, or humane?

Thanks all for the commentary. I did not expect this thread to become such a strong discussion, but I am learning a lot from all sides. Thanks all for sharing what you know.

 

[Bossroo]

Now I get it , to save our precous fossil fuels that our nonsustainable industrial farms so outragously consume... Momma has to go to your farm, she has to first pack her brood of kiddies in her SUV then stop at the nearest gas station to fill up with CORN based ethanol gasoline [ to be politically correct, my own car whent from 26 miles per gallon on regular gasolene to 17 miles per galon on State mandated Corn based ethanol fuel, somehow I mysteriously lost 9 miles per gallon] then drive to your farm to buy your chicken @ $5.00 a pound since, as was stated, that was near the cost of production of healthy free range chickens (go to town to buy CORN based ethanol gas then to go a feed store to buy organic feed then go home to feed the chickens, then catch the chickens at night load them up in the back of your pickup to go to a small processor, that may or not follow all the regulations, a couple of hours away, go back to pick up the packaged chickens in your pick up, take them home and put them in your freezer to await for a customer to purchase a chicken)At 4 pounds = $20 to feed 2 of her kids. Then buy a second chicken to feed herself and her husband. $40 for two birds. Then Mamma has to drive to another organic farm to buy organic vegies. Then Mamma has to drive to another farm to buy organic potatoes or rice. On her way home she has to stop at another gas station to buy some more CORN based ethanol gas so she can drive her precous cargo home. Me thinks that the Dictator of Venszuela and the Shieks of Arabia are still making the same amount for their fossil oil. Oh yea! my feeble brain seams to have some memmory caught in the dark corner of ages of spider webs , the Great Briton seized and destroyed Millions of Chickens or was it Sheep or maybe Cattle and incinerated them from the poor peasants on the moors. Or was it in the Europeon countries that did it. Maybe it was in some SE Asian countries that had severe human illnesses and deaths that was traced by WHO to the open markets that sold the peasant chickens, ducks, and geese. Who then destroyed millions of the birds. Maybe it was the Communist Chinese that did it. Possibly it was the MELOMINE that was added to baby formulas to falsely increase protene test levels at their Chinese goverment owned production factories. No, maybe it was the Melomine tainted pet food ingredients made in China that killed many a Fido and Kitty over here in the US. Darn it, my brain is cobweb brimmed, but I seem to recall that there was a dairy cow imported to the US from Canada that came down with mad cow disease here that caused the Japanese to have an emotional cow and Politics took over to protect their own beef industry. Funny, but driving on I 5 in Central California that one's olfactory nodes gets this odor wafting from the Harris Farms cattle feed lots with thousands upon thousands of Corn fed beef being fattened and then every 90 days being slaughtered , packaged and somehow take a voyage in mobile freezer camp vessels from the Bay area sea port then over a big puddle of water then mysteriously apear in Japan's grocery stores. Getting old sucks.

 

[greyfields]

Well, you're argument is a little shotdown by the fact I haul our meat and vegetables to a farmers market, thus taking the carbon emissions and spreading it across 60 or 80 people rather than each one of them doing the entire trip separately.