Having worked on a factory farm in the past, I can confirm that those chickens do indeed have a great life compared to what's standard practice in the industry. And no, you don't want to know...
Yup, anyone who has worked in mass production of meat is very aware. It didn't stop me eat meat but it changed my behaviour like amounts, cooking from scratch over prepared, traceability, safe cooking practices... Fixed industrial chicken coops are hell.
Not everyone can have nor want a farm, most of what I do really should be common knowledge and just makes sense. Having your own farm and access to wonderful fresh produce os great but it's a lot of work.
We don't really need everyone to have a farm to eliminate factory farming. We just need a farm in every neighborhood able to cover for that neighborhood.
I bet you could find one person per most neighborhoods who'd be happy to farm if they were given the means.
Also, people have gotten too familiar with eating different meals each day instead of the same thing over and over again. A farm doesn’t produce 40 or more different product products.
Yeah, but that's why we trade. Besides, not everything needs to be produced locally if the goal is to replace animal factory farming. Most animals wouldn't be suited to farm in cities or suburbs anyway.
Some farms produce multiple crops, especially the larger operations.
I worked with an organic grower that would produce like, 5-6 crops at once, depending on the season. They grew several different types of squash (butternut, zucchini, yellow, spaghetti, and acorn), broccoli, onions, two different beet varieties, cabbages, lettuce, and some other leafy greens like mustard, kale, and lots of corn.
That's a pretty diverse set of staple veggies. They didn't grow any fruit, but this was in northern Colorado, so that's not really surprising.
I wa sraised on farms, I worked on farms, I can tell you: people think they want the responsibility... And then actually do it... That's why most developed countries nneed to import their farm hands from poorer countries.
Yeah, also raised on a farm, I really have to laugh at people that think it's just a thing that one person on every neighborhood can take care of for everyone else on the block. I dislike these huge factory farms, but there's a reason people don't want to work on farms.
Even my own family farm, it's not enough to make a living off of... maybe if it was closer to a major population center and was somehow connected enough for a farmer's market. But I can't just sell wheat at a farmer's market. Nor a steer. You still need a HIGH amount of processing to get this food on people's tables, one way or another.
It is, yes. It's not very likely to happen on a large scale any time soon. For it to happen, we need to collectively agree that we want to do what it takes to move away from the hell of our making that is factory farming.
But if we ever do decide that, it's not impossible.
There are plenty of studies on this already. Its physically impossible at the population densities we see today. Same goes for vertical gardens and other similar concepts. Its just not possible give current financial and physical constraints.
You're really underestimating the massive amount of logistics it takes to feed our huge populations. This one-farm-per-neighborhood plan is Great Leap Forward level thinking.
Our industrialized food system is bad, but coming up with a better system that will feed this many fucking people isn't a walk in the park.
It's a volume thing. I have chickens myself, but there's having chickens and there's having 10k chickens a week for processing, literally like a factory.
We have a small ranch and our livestock, I feel, is treated fairly well. I'll spend 10 minutes every day in the chicken run just feeding those lunatics leftovers from the table. It's funny because when I'm lucky enough to draw tags I'll get a mule deer and that's ~75lb of venison. Over populated animal, taken in a specific zone at a specific time with a specific weapon, all outlined by wildlife officials. Single shot, usually the animal is dead before it even hears the rifle report.
And I know people who thinks that's brutal, all the while they are consuming industrial meat production. People should go see a slaughterhouse. They should ask themselves where all the male chickens (cockerels, roosters) end up.
Not every family can purchase ethically produced meat, I get it. But if you have the means you really should do your best.
Yeah as u/JubalHarshawII said. Many people think hunting is rednecks getting wasted on a Saturday night and blasting deer with machine guns from a pickup bed. And then they'll believe the package on the front of the meat in saranwrap showing a happy cow in a pasture with a guy in overalls next to it.
I'm in Nevada and half of NDOW (Nevada department of wildlife)'s funding comes from hunting and fishing licenses and applications. I'm coughing up ~$200 /year when I don't even get tags, make it $300 when I do.
I'm not anti-hunting, but many times hunting is EXACTLY that, and so much worse. Drunk rednecks and the politicians who protect them are not doing hunting's reputation any favors. I'd link horror stories, but I'm not interested in feeling suicidal today.
What you're talking about isn't hunting, it's literally poaching. It's the difference between going to the store and buying something with cash versus sticking a gun in the cashier's face and walking out with the same product.
One, hunting, is a legal and regulated activity. The other, poaching, is the illegal taking of restricted animals.
If you want to hate on poaching, for for it, I sure do. It's very rare in my area and every hunter hates it because not only is it dangerous and stupid but it screws up the hunting grounds for everyone.
Even if you have tags poaching in most states would include shooting from a roadway, shooting at night with night optics / thermals, using baits or attractants, etc. It's a broad list.
Visit a vegan sub, maybe not "worse" but they have nothing kinda to say. But also there are a lot of ppl that think meat comes from the supermarket and hunting is cruel and barbaric because they have no idea what goes on before it gets to the supermarket.
Deer are a pest. They destroy countless crops and spread diseases. They are also converting plant material that we can't digest into protein we can. It's actually environmentally beneficial to hunt and consume deer.
I hadn't really thought about it until like a year ago, but when you're chowing down on chicken wings, if you eat 8, that's 4 chickens. Obviously the rest of the chicken is used, but still.
I just went vegan instead. You can make like 4x the "ground beef" at the same cost these days, just with Tofu. I hope more people at least learn that the factory farm industry is doing a lot to keep meat slightly more affordable but doing immense damage for it. It's a cancer for the consumer, the workers, the people that live around them... and hell on Earth for the animals. I'm glad you found your line and you're happy with it.
I am not a vegan but love what I was introduced to. I was originally going to comment about how going vegan is kinda a privilege as not everyone has that option available to them but it would be stemming from ignorance. I have never considered making the products myself at home…
That being said I will probably never go full-on vegan but I’m sure an animal “would appreciate” me choosing vegan options every now and then anyway.
I've been vegan for 9 years just for the animals. I didn't really think much of it for a while. I'm American and the American factory farm system is horrendous. I understand people from other cultures and countries feeling attacked because their countries food supply is nothing compared to the CAFO juggernaut that is the US. I don't really have any advice on how to reconcile those emotions as I'm an American and I'm still working on my own with my own country.
I'll just say there's a lot of talented people that make vegan food in very approachable ways and they're all over the place on the internet.
Honestly, if you can get a hold of tofu, you can already do more than you'll ever need for replacing meat every few meals. I've made the tofu equivalent of eggs, ground beef, fish, etc... it's extremely versatile and you could just take whatever spices you can get a hold of a find something to replace with tofu.
I don't know the conversions on the measurements but...
Extra/Super Firm Block of Tofu
4 tbsp of Nutrional Yeast
1 tbsp of Corn Starch
Salt
Pepper (I add a little when I make it then I add more at the end when it's fresh out of the oven)
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
You break it into nugget sized pieces, coat them and stick them in an oven @ 425 F for like 20+ minutes (The longer the crispier) you'll get tofu nuggets that you can use for so many things.
The other is Seitan which is just gluten from the wheat plant. You can literally wash all-purpose flour into being Seitan. Once you're there you can marinade that and replace the feeling of steak in a lot of recipes.
I spent my first years of veganism doing more consumer grade with Beyond Meat, Impossible Meat, etc... but I've been really enjoying learning more food science behind Tofu, Seitan, and soy in general.
You don't have to be perfect and we all start somewhere.
Just saved this comment as a reminder for later. One of my sister in laws made an entire vegan thanksgiving dinner from scratch and she crushed it. 10/10 my only complaint that I kept to myself was that it was damn near impossible for her to be able to keep it all warm without an excess in equipment that would be used maybe twice a year. I couldn’t get enough of the vegan ham.
I would love to learn how to make a near perfect imitation burger or incorporate these new vegan ingredients into the Mediterranean diet we have recently started. Thanks for the insight, I’m going to probably try to make some stuff in secret until I nail one of the recipes. Then I will unveil it one night for my wife and I to enjoy. There ARE some things we won’t mind keeping around but if I can make a handful of dishes well enough that’s a good start to me.
I'm vegetarian but I still understand harm reduction. The world would be a much better place if meat eaters only ate from farms that treated their animals kindly up until killing them.
You’re right. Since they’re being slaughtered anyways, we SHOULD just keep them in the cheapest, least humane living conditions possible. It doesn’t matter how they lived if they die, I guess.
Do you have no concept of "harm reduction"? Yes, not killing would be best. But that's not currently feasible given human culture. So treating animals well before slaughter is OBVIOUSLY better than treating them cruelly. Like, come on. This is a self-evident point.
They're "vegan" (except for all the killing and eating animals part) but they're "one of the good ones" so they're not against killing animals and eating their body parts, they would never consider not killing an animal.
Yeah these days there's speculation about where the US has been importing beef from to try to cover the deficiency and keep costs down and yeah, seems like the government really doesn't want beef to ever get too expensive. If things get worse the beef in the supermarket might get even more dangerous to consume and the cows slaughtered for it probably aren't having a good time either but if cheeseburgers get too expensive then apparently society would collapse. Really feels like the kind of cycle I don't want to rely on.
It's been so pressed into the US culture with marketing. It took my brain a long time to break out of it.
I started looking at things like eating a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel. I'd just stare at it and think. "It took 3 animals to make this fucking thing"
I used to practice my Data Analyst skills using the Census of Agriculture from the USDA. That's when I really started to see that "Small family farms" are no longer possible for the rate of consumption the US goes through now. The numbers are staggering... Billions and billions of animals.
The post WWII abundance in the US changed a lot of it forever.
Yeah and the stuff the milk people have done has been crazy. Putting dairy into the food pyramid so every kid has to drink milk for lunch, and more recently partnering with restaurants to make more cheese items.
Admittedly, I had a pretty combative mindset towards vegetarians because the Dairy industry is far and above the worst and they were getting hung up over cheese.
Yeah. On the other hand, every little bit helps, and I know I at least have still not gotten anywhere near as far along the path towards veganism as I'd like. Still need to figure out how to make beans and tofu palatable for my wife, and then we'll see.
This is a super cozy lazy Tofu Nugget recipe I use all the time.
1 Extra/Super Firm Tofu Block (I'd recommend the firmest you can find for people that aren't big on trying Tofu)
4 tbsp of Nutrional Yeast
1 tbsp of Corn Starch
1 tsp of Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
I add the pepper most at the end when I take them out of the oven and I don't really measure the Garlic and Onion Powder; I go off vibes but I'm pretty heavy with them.
You break the tofu into nugget sized pieces, mix it all together and stick them in an oven @ 425 F for like 20+ minutes (The longer the crispier) you'll get tofu nuggets that you can use for so many things.
I generally make it with two blocks at a time, so just double everything but I throw them in wraps and cover them in BBQ sauce when I'm lazy. I'd even eat them cold honestly. I think they have a very chicken strip taste when you add the pepper at the end.
I'm not sure how much you've dabbled with Seitan, but you make your own just by washing all-purpose flour, then slow cooking it with veggie brother. There's a lot of methods to making Seitan, but all-purpose flour is easier to obtain for most I assume.
I can get 16 oz (freedom units) of tofu for $2.50. That being said I bought a book about making my own tofu, so I'll dive into that eventually.
There are some vegan content creators for all flavors of cooking whether it's cheap, fast, easy, or more involved. I could send you some of my favorites if you're interested.
I live in Europe, these thing can be found for reasonable price but it s more of a niche thing. If I go to the super market, they're either very low quality or crazy expensive
It's a tough battle and you don't normally make friends doing it. I'm glad you've made the choice to do what you can. I hope it gets easier where you are to keep doing it <3
Someone who worked at a slaughterhouse and still didn't go vegan doesn't give af about animals. Sorry, but you're a baddy if even that's not enough to stop you from eating animals. Thrre's no cognitive dissonance at that point. Meanwhile, most vegans like us saw a short documentary or something similar and then went vegan. You're either an animal lover or don't see animals as sentient beings that deserve to live. A bite of food is never worth the life of what you're eating.
That's completely valid and I do agree. I grew up in Texas and had ag classes that really put the thought into my brain. Then I watched Dominion, What the Health, and Earthlings and that was all I needed. I've been vegan for 9 years now and at this point it feels that it would have been inevitable. My soul these days constantly tells me I'm too tolerant and I'm not doing enough... but that battle with people is exhausting. I've been trying to be more encouraging and keep the conversation points to easy ways for people to replace some meals.
I totally feel how you do. I think that must be the struggle most of us feel. But you're doing 100 times than most people do, so don't be so hard on yourself. And it always feels like a failure when we can't convince even our own family to reduce, but that's on them, not us. I don't see my dad often, but he never eats meat in front of me and my twin sister (we're both vegan) and is always proud of us. Our mom is supportive in the sense that she lives with us and she makes a few meals a week that are vegan (we're Persian, and a lot of Persian food is easy to make vegan by just replacing the meet). And she'll eat vegan with us when we all go out to eat somewhere vegan, but she still eats animal products with every meal and cooks it in the kitchen. I basically don't try to say anything anymore because she's so defensive about it. I just leave it be at this point even though it fucking sucks to smell chicken or fish...etc being cooked.
I'm very blessed at least to have a twin sister. We're so alike and we've both been vegan for 12ish years. She actually went vegan 9 months before me, while i was still vegetarian. We have eachother.
I just make sure that if I'm going to waste food, I always make sure to eat the meat, wasting bread/veg/pasta/rice isn't as much of a concern. An animal died for me to eat it, I'm not going to let any of it go to waste.
I try to buy as much clearance/ "manager special" meat as possible. It saves me money, but it also makes me at least feel a little better that the lives of those animals aren't going to literal waste.
We rescue battery hens and the state they are in when they come to us is heartbreaking. Always rewarding to see them get their feathers and enjoy their last few years with us (although sad when they go). Images from factory henhouses are like something from a horror movie
Producers and consumers go hand in hand. One can't exist without the other.
I want to mention this because we point fingers at the producers while somehow not being aware that we are the consumers. If we don't stop buying this shit we are also responsible, and no, we don't need them.
I have 40 chickens and they have a massive farm to roam.
they play and frolick and eat bugs every day. they are super pampered and only used for egg production.
but all is not perfect. they still get picked off by foxes if the dogs area way for more than a day or 2.
they are relentless.
the only 1000% fool proof way to secure them is an enclosed coop like in the video.
so there really is no such thing as great chicken life. only as good as it gets lol.
We have an automatic door that closes at night. Chickens tend to go inside when it gets dark and the door closes automatically because of a light sensor (and reopens in the morning Ofcourse)
We only have a few chickens though. Three currently. Haven't had one being picked off in 10+ years though and we live next to a forest.
at my place I've had foxes camping the entrance to the coop. they know they like to linger around pecking before going in. the only thing that keeps them at bay are dogs.
We have lots of ducks in our neighborhood because people feed stray cats.
The new hatchings start in the double digits and a few days later there are one or two left. Very few of the ducks born in this neighborhood make it to 50 days, and I'm in the suburbs.
Nature is brutal. I have neighbors who feed stray cats as well. They kill, and eat a lot of rodents and burds. But the fun problem is the stray cats feed the coyotes. The amount of half eaten kitten carcuses that can be found in a year isn't exactly a heart warming tale of forest critters.
Stray cats roaming outdoors is actually low key one of the greater ecological problems we face now outside of global warming. They dramatically reduce bird populations everywhere because they are such brutally efficient killers. And they reproduce like CRAZY.
I say this as someone who owns a couple of cats (my wife also fed strays back when we were dating, we eventually brought in a couple and saw the rest get adopted) and NEVER lets them outdoors...
Hey I get what you are saying but also most species have large offspring numbers for a reason. While you found a hole in my specific argument I hope you can understand my overall point.
Assuming they only lay for one rainy season, 15 eggs lifetime still implies an infant mortality rate of 87% for a stable population. 87% would die before laying eggs.
Alright, who remembers what you were doing the last 4th of July? Congrats, everything you've experienced since then is the effective life time of a meat chicken.
Well it depends on the breed of chicken. I'm not 100% sure what the name of the breed is, but your standard chicken you see at the supermarket was bred to grow fast to maximize profits. Problem is, a lot of them grow so fast, many will die of things like heart attacks because their body will grow too fast for their heart to keep up. The more wild breeds are much healthier and take longer to mature.. though they have a much better quality of life than the feeding chickens
For the most part this may be an alright life when you factor in the intelligence and pyramid of needs that a chicken has. But no one can deny that factory farm life is living hell and anything from there is objectively living terribly.
Do you understand that we are not forced to keep breeding those animals? We can simply stop doing it.
Neither life in the wild nor exploitation.
If you want to provide animals with a great life, the first step is to accept that they won't get you money, but cost money. They only viable rescource they should provide is companionship and only if they want it.
Pretending this is torture and chickens in the wild are as happy as can be is self serving immature nonsense.
And not knowing the difference between a human and a chicken is moronic
Having a field full of bugs to eat with zero predators is as good as it gets for chickens. Acting like they hate this because they want "freedom " is what happens when people who have seen too many Disney movies project human feelings onto animals
Just because you wouldn't like this doesn't mean a chicken also hates it.
You know you can be a vegetarian and have common sense right?
Sure, bud, chickens in the wild live till 80, have no worries and just have fun every day. Also chickens on the video imprisoned? They have plenty of space to roam around. Or u mean they can't visit Las Vegas on their day off?
You can distract with straw man arguments all you like, it won't make you right.
Those chickens are imprisoned and you know this, despite your bad faith comment. For clarity: they cannot leave and there are about 5-10 of them per square meter, as is clearly visible in the video.
Yes there is. Wild chickens are indigenous in India and are called Red Junglefowl. Do you think we domesticated a t.rex and bred it to be smaller or what?
Eh, there are varieties of chicken that effectively live free in the woods.
They still perch. They still lay eggs (not as many). They still have meat (not as much, and not as tender) but they can’t support nearly as many humans per acre inhabited.
These chickens grown for consumption live about 6-12 weeks. The closest non-domesticated equivalent, the junglefowl, can live for over a decade in the wild. One of these lives is clearly substantially worse than the other.
I come from poultry country. When I was like 4 yrs old, for some reason that I never learned, my dad and maybe another elder in our congregation made some deal where all the local congregants got together one Saturday and transferred a tractor trailer shipment of chicks into a local broiler house. Adults and children alike.
It was legit traumatizing and most of my life I've hated being around chickens, I am an animal person to the extreme degree, like I'll cuddle snakes and spiders and insects and possums etc but I've always struggled to find affection for chickens.
I assume child me's brain built that disconnect as a way to not have to unpack the trauma of what those poor poor chicks went thru.
Most definitely. Like I said poultry is the life blood of my county. From hatching to "processing" I'm fortunately and unfortunately very acquaintanced with the process. I developed a hate for factory farming at a very young age.
Most of the people I knew growing up worked in the poultry industry because they had bills to pay and kids to feed. Ironically tho, most of them raised and slaughtered there own chickens at home, they wouldn't eat meat from the very plants they worked at, even tho they could get it at a deep discount.
High school friend once took a job where he had to shovel dead chickens in a farm. He said it's the most disgussing thing he ever did and he stopped eating meat because of that.
I have my own little farm and get the meat from there. It's both a lot healthier and better for the animals too. There are videos online if you are interested.
We don’t own chickens anymore but those eggs were night and day compared to factory farmed grocery store ones. So yellow and nutritious. Proper care is a win win for all
I used to work at Edinburgh business park near yhe airport. I would have to arrive at like 6am just after the nearby chicken abbatoir did its daily slaughtering and that smell...christ, I can still smell it. Smelled like death
If you are over the age of 15 and you've never spent a day working in food service/farming/processing you should be forced to watch at least 6 hours of footage on the industry.
Its one of the most vital and misunderstood/taken for granted industries in our world and its also some of the most brutal and uncompassionate work humans do day in and day out.
Everyone should understand where their food comes from.
What are the magic words on the box I need to look for when I want to buy this kind of chicken? I know so many of the phrases they use are based on inhumane technicalities.
Can't tell you what to look for unless you live in Europe. America has different standards. Should be something like free range though. We also have bio in case of eggs which is supposed to mean that chickens are not constantly being injected with antibiotics to keep them alive for the couple dozen days it takes to grow them, and with hormones to make sure they grow as fast as possible.
I only want to eat happy chickens that were cut down in the prime of their life while out playing in a field with their chicken buddies in their roving, solar-powered funhouse!
It's not even barbaric at this point. It's modern industrialized slaughter. Barbaric is crude, this is streamlined and methodical. These chickens are bio-engineered to grow as fast as possible. Their bones don't develop properly and often they are in constant pain and immobile. The are given antibiotics, hormones and high nutrient feed to keep the growing cycle under 50 days from hatchling to slaughter weight. Even if you free them they will just die off in a few days in freedom because they cannot live outside of the factory infrastructure keeping them alive.
you don't need to have worked on a farm. There are videos of machines on youtube where the live chickens get sucked into a tube & nuggets come out. ofc all the male chickens go into the grinder as soon as they're old enough to have their gender(sex? I'm not an english speaker) determined. It's not a good life. I just pay a bit more for eggs from chickens that get to free roam.
No, but a video is one thing and being there is completely different. You can't smell a video for starters. You also usually don't get a real sense of scale of the operation. To be economically viable chickens need to reach "maturity" in less than 50 days. That's from hatchling to slaughter ready in a month and a half. In order to achieve that chickens have been selectively bred to put on weight faster than their bones can grow, so they are usually in pain and immobile for the whole process, which couples nicely with the zero space they get on factory farms. They are also injected on a daily basis with antibiotics and hormones to ensure they a) don't die due to the conditions and b) grow fast enough to reach the target times. You also consume a significant portion of those growth hormones with your meat by the way. So yeah, a video of a grinder is one thing, and being there is something else entirely.
Don't know how it is where you're from, but in the real world people do undesirable work, especially in their early years when they don't have any real experience with a profession.
I live in Delaware and it's insane the amount of chickens we have. I would love if they started doing these moveable coops because the scent that wafts over to my house from the coops a mile down the road is rough all year long.
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u/The_Real_Kru 6d ago
Having worked on a factory farm in the past, I can confirm that those chickens do indeed have a great life compared to what's standard practice in the industry. And no, you don't want to know...