I am surrounded by chicken farms, and the farmers who own and operate them. Almost all of them are family owned farms who sell to Tyson.
I can say with confidence that they work hard and are very diligent in maintaining a high standard of quality.
It's a false sense of higher morality to claim "ethical reasons" for not buying those chicken. You aren't saving or improving the lives of any chickens when you do that.
And those chickens don't have it all that bad. I also raise my own chickens and they have a great life for a chicken but it's not idyllic. Chickens have always been low on the food chain and here where I live there are a lot of chicken eaters that are not human.
As for safe and organic feed, we all want that, even my neighbors who are chicken farmers. Right now that's still easier said than done. Costco's move may help lead/push us that direction and I commend them for leading on this issue.
> It's a false sense of higher morality to claim "ethical reasons" for not buying those chicken. You aren't saving or improving the lives of any chickens when you do that.
I don't see how this statement can be held with confidence to be true.
If I buy chicken whose precise provenance is known, and which are raised in humane conditions with high-quality feed, with a process that is minimally negatively (or, ideally, positively) environmentally impactful, then indeed there is an ethical gain in doing so.
If I buy from Tyson, I have no way of knowing any of this. Nor does Tyson even claim that I can know these things.
> If I buy chicken whose precise provenance is known, and which are raised in humane conditions with high-quality feed
We're talking morals and we're surely going to have some differences in opinion, but I don't see how raising animals who've been selectively bred to grow an order of magnitude faster and larger than they would naturally, kept indoors for most of their lives, and killed at less than 1% of their potential lifespan could ever be considered "humane". Especially when their consumption is wholly unnecessary.
First off, not eating chickens doesn't make life any better for those chickens that are eaten, and no chickens live better as a result of not eating them. The best that can be said is less chickens live because they were never hatched from an egg specifically to be eaten.
Those Tyson chicken farmers are not torturing chickens, not by a long shot. They get good feed and fresh water and as much of that as they want. I don't know what you imagine chickens do all day when they're not in a barn, but I know what they do. All they do is eat, drink, crap, and screw, and by far most of their time is spent eating. They don't drink much and nothing I know of screws faster than a rooster, so that takes up almost none of their day.
And I can assure you that the lifespan of a free range chicken isn't very long. I know this because there are no wild chickens running around where I live, even though 1000s of acres of National Forest surround me and there are many people that raise them at home and farmers with huge barns full of them surrounding the National Forests here. And because I hatched and kept over 30 chickens myself last year and all of them got eaten by wild carnivores. Mostly fox. They're sneaky as can be.
I don't have a problem with those who don't eat meat, but if we're going to talk in terms of morals let's not kid ourselves or others by thinking that eating only veggies isn't taking "life". It is, and I just cannot kid myself into thinking that killing a tomato is less or more of an affront to God than killing a chicken.
There's really very little difference between raising tomatoes from seed and raising chickens from eggs. Both of those are living things and you have to kill them to eat them.
And I won't try to kid myself into believing that I'd not eat a chicken raised by those Tyson farmers if I were starving. I would, and fast too. And so would most everyone who feels a sense of moral superiority to those who eat chickens when they're not starving.
I'll probably piss some people off with this, but here it goes anyway... Chickens, and really pretty much every animal we raise to eat, are all fairly well packaged for eating. From cows to pigs to chickens and even fish of all sizes, they all are dressed out pretty much the same and it's a pretty simple and fast process to get them kitchen ready, and they taste good, and they make you feel good (as opposed to modern junk foods).
Here's another thing... Most everyone I know who's taken the life of any animal for food did so with a very reverent and thankful attitude. You think about that a lot more than you do when buy a taco at Taco Bell or a salad at a restaurant. I do the same when I take veggies from my garden because I know I'm taking life to sustain my own. I provide care and protection to both my veggies and my chickens and I give thanks when I take them to sustain myself and family and friends.
That's all any of us can do and the best we can do. There is no other way to live as a human.
> It is, and I just cannot kid myself into thinking that killing a tomato is less or more of an affront to God than killing a chicken.
Just a reminder, fruiting plants make the fruit for animals to eat to spread their seeds. It doesn't kill the plant. With the exception of herbs and fungi almost every plant humans eat evolved to be eaten and often we only eat parts of the plant that regrow with the intent to be eaten without killing the main body.
"Just a reminder, fruiting plants make the fruit for animals to eat to spread their seeds. It doesn't kill the plant"
But the fact is we do kill those plants. Those tomatoes are filled with seed intended, by nature, to propagate the species, but the chance of that dies when you eat them, and then the entire plant dies. There are no birds eating their fruit and spreading their seed. It that were the case we'd see tomatoes growing wild all over the US, but we don't.
Carrots, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, etc, etc, are all harvested (murdered if you will) before they even get a chance to go to seed. Your reminder doesn't account for that.
So, yes, in fact, billions of plants are murdered each year because we humans eat them.
I'm more curious about why this so difficult for some people to accept. It's obviously driven by empathy and compassion, and I admire that, but it ignores the facts that plainly exist all around us all the time.
The latest figure I could find easily says "In 2008, 9.08 billion chickens were slaughtered in the United States".
And tomatoes? "According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization statistics, around 340 billion pounds (170 million tons) of fresh and processing tomatoes were produced globally in 2014. The harvested area covered 12.4 million acres (5 million hectares) of farm land."
That's a lot of food for a lot of people. All of it brought to life that's taken for one purpose, to sustain us.
This does not make us murderous beasts, and no one, not even those who've claimed to be "Breatharians", has proved they could exist without taking life. There's just no getting around that necessity.
As far as I can make out, this notion that one is existing without taking life is almost exclusively found in cities, generally far from where food is grown and harvested. I'm pretty much convinced it is a willful denial of the truth created by and to convince oneself they are superior to the crude masses who haven't achieved their advanced level of conscientious. And it's a growing trend.
The fact is, it's an example of denial. We all take life to sustain our own. The best we can do is provide the means for it to flourish and take it in as painless a way as possible, rather it's a chicken or a radish.
None of this addresses my original point: I simply do not believe (and, unlike with a local farm, can not verify) that all Tyson chickens are treated that way you're saying they are.
I think that some of them are kept in battery cages, fed antibiotics, debeaked or otherwise mutilated, etc.
I see truckloads of chickens being hauled to the processing plants quite often and they all have feathers, beaks, legs, wings, etc. All their parts are intact and where they should be.
"Debeaking" is not what it sounds like. Chickens have a small, sharp, tooth like point on the very end of their upper beak, and that's what's removed. It's kind of like pulling an incisor, and not like at all like cutting off their entire beak. And that's mostly only done to laying hens, and not done at all on chickens used for cooking by Tyson. Those chickens are only about six weeks old when they're sent for processing. Their beaks haven't even begun to form that "tooth" yet.
Tyson has some pretty strict and well defined standards for those growers.
It's worth taking the time to learn the truth and facts because otherwise you end up worrying about things that do not, in fact, exist.
> Tyson has some pretty strict and well defined standards for those growers.
No they don't. Not at all.
Paraphrasing an organization "Tyson Tortures Chickens"[0]:
Has Tyson committed to reducing maximum stocking density to equal to or less than 6 lbs./sq. ft., with no cages?
Does Tyson require that contractors provide chickens with enriched environments, including litter, lighting, and enrichment that meets GAP’s new
Has Tyson required contractors to replace live-shackle slaughter with multi-step controlled atmosphere processing that eliminates the horrific suffering caused by shackling, shocking, and slitting the throats of conscious?
---
Buying chickens from a local farm, where you can see the treatment, is better. It's better in every way. Your defense of Tyson is puzzling to me.
This has sat for awhile, but it's worthy of a response.
"Buying chickens from a local farm, where you can see the treatment, is better. It's better in every way."
That's true. That's why I raise my own.
"Your defense of Tyson is puzzling to me."
I am more defending the farmers that live within a 100 miles of me because I've seen their farms and know some of them.
Processing chickens is a bloody business. It's easy to duff off that responsibility to someone else, and easy to complain about how it's done. That's a lot easier that doing it.
Those chickens farmer neighbors of mine are not processing those chickens. They are selling chickens to Tyson.
Tyson chickens feed a huge number of people everyday, many of which are poor, and of the choices they have it's among the better ones.
The notion that I should sit at my desk and complain about Tyson while not actively pursuing what I believe to be a much better way to feed all those people just isn't one I can stand on.
I can agree that farmers and companies like Tyson should to their best to raise and process those chickens in the quickest and least painful way possible but I'm not going to demonize them. They feed a lot of people and that needs to be considered too.
So, the thing to do is work on better ways. You buy your chickens from local farmers. I raise my own and help others do the same by incubating eggs. I actually hatched a couple hundred chicken last year and kept around 30. I gave the rest away.
I won't be visiting "tysontorturesanimals.com" but I will encourage you to design, fund, and build a processing plant that meets your standards and stop complaining about Tyson.
> It's a false sense of higher morality to claim "ethical reasons" for not buying those chicken. You aren't saving or improving the lives of any chickens when you do that.
Consumer pressure has made a variety of improvements in animal welfare, and is likely to continue to do so.
> It's a false sense of higher morality to claim "ethical reasons" for not buying those chicken. You aren't saving or improving the lives of any chickens when you do that.
Yes you are. Every dollar is like a little vote. The things that everyone puts dollars into will grow, and the things that they dont, wont.
I'm all for "safe" feed, but assigning "organic = safe" is disingenuous. Like it or not (because the studies are not conclusive), but GMO is the only current way we know how to scale food production.
It can't be true because you can't fathom it or because you have evidence of other widely supported organic techniques that I'm unfamiliar with? I mean sure, there is a ton of innovation in the food production supply chain, but nothing quite like what GM has done for agriculture production.
Why do you think GMO was established in the first place? If purely organic food is both superior quality and more economically sustainable, then historically speaking why didn't farmers just continue on that path to meet consumer demand?
> You originally said GMOs are the only way to scale, not the best way to scale.
Ok, fair enough, I should have been more specific. Let me rephrase my whole point of view:
"The innovation of GMO is largely responsible for the large scale production of the global food supply. I would very surprised if any other innovation in farming has created a higher ROI in terms of crop yield. There are certainly other factors, but to the original parent comment, pretending like organic is synonymous with safe (and equally as it implies non-organic means, or GMO, is not safe) is disingenuous".
> It's not either organic or GMO, there are other options
Like what specifically? Fertilizers and pesticides?
Agree that the GMO vs organic characterization was not fair. But I wasn't addressing that topic, but rather the comment that that GMOs are our only option.
I can say with confidence that they work hard and are very diligent in maintaining a high standard of quality.
It's a false sense of higher morality to claim "ethical reasons" for not buying those chicken. You aren't saving or improving the lives of any chickens when you do that.
And those chickens don't have it all that bad. I also raise my own chickens and they have a great life for a chicken but it's not idyllic. Chickens have always been low on the food chain and here where I live there are a lot of chicken eaters that are not human.
As for safe and organic feed, we all want that, even my neighbors who are chicken farmers. Right now that's still easier said than done. Costco's move may help lead/push us that direction and I commend them for leading on this issue.