Would you eat an inhumane slaughtered chicken?

[Doc7]

Have you even whatched the video above? Would you not buy meat that you knew was done humainly?

Yes I watched the video above. We eat chicken from the grocery store and Walmart at my house. I also am a fiend for McNuggets and I stop at Bojangles for a snack frequently. I am sure these chickens were processed by the same industry as the video above. I will not change my eating habits for knowing “how the sausage is made”, as they say.

 

[bobbi-j]

Unfortunately, not everyone is in a position to grow and process their own chickens. We, as a society, are quite spoiled by having access to plentiful, inexpensive food. That means chickens being processed as they are, and farmers using chemicals to grow their crops. We're also used to nice pretty vegetables and fruits. Without mass production practices, that wouldn't happen either. Are any of these practices ideal? Not really. But are we willing to pay double, triple or more for our food? I'd guess the answer to that would be a resounding, "NO".

 

[Shadowfire]

That's terrible. I watched the first video and now, even though I have been thinking about it but previously wasn't sure, I am going to be vegetarian except for humanely raised meats.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yes.

Dead is dead, having suffered is having suffered, and my not eating it isn't going to make it un-suffered or un-dead.
But my preference is for animals that live a good life. I prefer that my joys come at a low expense to other living things. (Please note, that I do not inherently consider a loss of life to be an expense. All living things die, the only way to prevent death is to prevent the creation of new life. It's more about HOW they live than IF they die.) This includes both people (less Chinese/Indian sweat shops and less non-living wages in the west) as well as animals.

So I raise my own. Not everyone is in a position to be able to do that. And I'm also willing to pay more for a product where the animal is treated better. But I don't begrudge poorer people for not being able to afford that. I'm lucky to have the resources I do to make choices about my food - not everybody is.
It used to be that meat was a major luxury and was critically well cared for as a result. But it also used to be that people spent a huge percentage of their income on food and it also used to be that a lot of people starved to death.

Unless we can repair serious economic inequalities so that you aren't massively exploiting living things (people, animals, plants and the environment as a whole) simply to consume to live, this likely won't change.

As the kids these days say, the only ethical consumption under capitalism is eating ***.

 

[Ribh]

One reason I'm Vegetarian. Not the only reason, but one.

 

[sourland]

I am a omnivore, and that includes being a meat eater. I would prefer 'home raised and killed', but that is not always a possibility.

 

[aart]

Guessing the most adamant neophyte idealists don't foot the grocery bill.

 

[Chickassan]

I'm a vegetarian so I don't technically have a dog in this fight. I would however like to point out the term humanely slaughtered sounds nice but in reality it only means the animal is stunned before it is bled out.
In a thread created in such a way to get a litmus test on awareness of inhumane verses humane slaughter practices it is good to be aware of what we are actually discussing.

 

[aart]

I'm a vegetarian so I don't technically have a dog in this fight.

'Vegetarian' can be many things. Nothing personal chickassan, but in general.....just because one doesn't eat the flesh/muscle of animals doesn't mean they are not participating in the commercial food industry horrors.
'Vegetarians' often eat eggs, milk, cheese.

In a thread created in such a way to get a litmus test on awareness of inhumane verses humane slaughter practices it is good to be aware of what we are actually discussing.

.....to be inflammatory and rather contradictory.
Why was it put in the incubation forum showing chicks being ground up,
when the title was about eating slaughtered animals??

Wonders if the OP, or their supporters, have dogs or cats that eat food with chicken products as an ingredient?

I would however like to point out the term humanely slaughtered sounds nice but in reality it only means the animal is stunned before it is bled out.

..and a Very Good Point it is!

 

[mandelyn]

This is why my breeding program has grown into the "for the table" method. LOVE our extra cockerels, can't have too many! Dud hen? Stew. Humane, happy, healthy stew. I know where they were, how they were treated, what they ate and how it all ended. I know what they were soaked in, I know what they were flavored with and I don't inject them with filler fluids to increase weight. No preservatives needed, no Salmonella bath needed. They weren't packed in China.

I don't have to watch the above videos, my vegan/vegetarian friends have already shown me. I remind them that "Organic" can mean a lot of different things, based on what country you're in. Oil derived? Oh, it's of the Earth, so that's organic! "Natural" flavors? Yum! (not)

What did I learn first hand as a hobby breeder? Extra boys happen. About 50% of the time. No bantam or lean and efficient bird will come here again for hatching eggs if they can't reach a reasonable table size. I went back and forth on raising Cornish cross but in the end I can't raise the exact same bird that's meant for fast growth and an early "product" end.

Treating meat as a product is what tanked the whole thing and got us where we're at. That and the fact that there's just this huge, hungry human population.

I read an article that talked about how if other developing countries caught up in meat consumption, the commercial methods couldn't even keep up with it. Which says to me that meat shouldn't be that cheap.

Historically... meat never was cheap. You owned the cow or you bought the cow. Or you had to hike out and hunt the deer or check the trap lines. Bacon was for the poor. The fatty cuts, the tough meat... it wasn't ground up and chemically tenderized to be the burger with fries, way back when, that was the cheapest meat you could get from the butcher, along with the neck, or stew bones. Back when we had professional butchers in every town.

Sunday chicken dinner used to be special. It was effort or it was costly.

Then meat got easy and cheap. Meat should be about 30% of the diet. We eat a LOT more than that in the US, as a statistic.

The National Chicken Council said in 2018 Americans will eat a record 93 pounds per person in 2018, even amid heightened safety concerns. Over the years, the population has swayed more towards chicken than beef.

I mean, seriously, Americans eat a lot of meat. Here's the breakdown...

https://www.meatinstitute.org/index.php?ht=d/sp/i/47465/pid/47465

42.2 BILLION pounds of chicken was produced IN the US in 2017. Does that even account for imports? I don't know.

You know what that 42.2 Billion pounds doesn't have with it? How many cockerel chicks of not-meat breeds had to find a different situation since they weren't destined to be a layer hen.

2017 Layer Hen population was 351.5 million. Is that just the commercial farms getting counted? What happened to all those that hatched as male? Well... nevermind.

It's too big to think about. It's really a daunting scale. So I only worry about the birds I hatch/raise and try to keep my "outside" chicken consumption to a minimum. It's dang near impossible not to be a hypocrite but I'm not going to embrace the times we're in either.

In other news, Costco is moving to produce their own chicken through their own contracted farmers, so that they can ensure a cheap price for their rotisserie chicken. 15 year contracts offered to the farmers. Originally they were going to try to to keep all of the farms within a 100 mile radius of the processing plant but have since had to look further.

People need to eat, there's no way around it. Options can be incredibly limited by where a person lives or what things cost. There is no easy answer and there is no fix-all. All we have readily available is personal choices and decisions that are within our means.

We can't afford to go buy the type of meat we raise. We can afford to keep chickens and go the labor intensive route! It's more fun and satisfying anyways, on the good days when you're not processing. Like hatch day, when more boys than girls isn't a bad thing.

My dogs get a decent Lamb and Rice kibble to supplement their home raised chicken/turkey, instead of "chicken meal" based kibble. Pretty sure I know where all those layer type cockerel chicks went.