Gas Stunning Birds

[Bossroo]

These posts are going way beyond dangerous.

Check with ones' home owners insurance as these behaviors will cause one's insurance policies to be cancelled and expose one to all types of liabilities !!!

 

[Ema]

So I read the posts and the article...what I am trying to figure out, and I don't think has been answered is...wouldn't the CO2 to some extent be present in the chicken's meat in the end result?? and if so, how safe would it be to consume that meat?? I mean I know Canada has strict rules in regards to meat in general but like everything else I am sure they will say a certain amount of the toxin is allowed. which in my mind makes me not even want to touch it to begin with, unless they could prove with 100 percent certainty that the toxin did not transfer to the birds meat. With that said I will stick to the age old proven method. maybe some people will think that is barbaric or what ever they will come up with, but frankly to me it is not acceptable to serve my family a plateful of antibiotics and unknown chemicals and toxins along with what they think is healthy and wholesome foods.

Ema

 

[Stacykins]

CO2 is present in all body tissue to some degree. It is a waste product of aerobic respiration on the cellular level.

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
In most tissues, there is a 5% CO2 level. Or at least that is the level of CO2 required to grow human, bird, mouse cells in culture. CO2 in itself is not toxic. You die in 100% co2 because you suffocate when O2 is displaced as it sinks in a closed container. It is CO that competitively binds to hemoglobin over O2 if I remember right.

 

[DenverBird]

Quote:
It'd be a heck of a lot safer than chloroform!

Like Silkie says, it probably wouldn't be a problem.

-DB

 

[Stacykins]

Quote:
In most tissues, there is a 5% CO2 level. Or at least that is the level of CO2 required to grow human, bird, mouse cells in culture. CO2 in itself is not toxic. You die in 100% co2 because you suffocate when O2 is displaced as it sinks in a closed container. It is CO that competitively binds to hemoglobin over O2 if I remember right.

Oxygen and CO2 binding to hemoglobin largely depends on the Oxygen–hemoglobin dissociation curve, which determines the hemoglobin's affinity for them and other substances (like how carbon monoxide binds more readily to hemoglobin than oxygen by over 200 times!). The resulting shift to the left or right causes alkalosis or acidosis.

The problem with using CO2 for culling is because the chemoreceptors that detect levels of carbon dioxide. The body knows when it is suddenly experiencing hypercapnic hypoxia (high CO2, low O2), and triggers a panic response that includes hyperventilation in an attempt to correct the situation. The animal will lose consciousness eventually, but such a death isn't pain free, if you can imagine the sensation of not being able to breathe.

 

[silkiechicken]

Yeah, if you want to test how it feels to be in a box of CO2, breath into a plastic bag for a while. We did that for a physiology lab while hooked up to O2 monitors and ECGs. The feeling of suffocation was arguably worse than using matlab to analyze our data. LOL

I'm still sticking with decapitation or cervical dislocation for my preferred method of putting animals down.

 

[Ema]

thanks for the explanations, and yes I whole heartedly agree that the chloroform idea is pretty dangerous.

anyways to me this topic goes along the lines of that one thread I saw not long ago around here about growing meat in labs. just not my thing I suppose.

Ema

 

[Kelsey2017]

The way we did it our first time may have been overkill, but the birds did bleed out clean with no broken wings or blood spots left undrained. We know how to use a gun and I suspect anyone who didn't, wouldn't use one. A .22 doesn't make much noise and the chickens were lining up to come out of the chicken yard, we didn't even have to catch them. I tried both slitting their necks and breaking their necks (which I can do quite precisely) but it came down to knowing that they were dead and done struggling before I cut their throats open. I helped out at our neighbors fancy chicken processing where they used shackles and a volunteer cutting throats, not very humane IMO, blood and flapping wings, broken wings, didn't seem nice to me. I applaud anyone looking for advice on ways to sedate or stun chickens, sometimes some of us need overkill. There is no chance of them coming back from the dead anyway!

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
That media altered rendition of growing meat is labs was one full crock o... Meat is more than a pile of myoblasts. Not to mention the tons of antibiotics, antimicrobial, antifungi drugs you'd have to grow them in. I was working in a muscle development lab at the time that came out.