them, he is not the one who profits by them. A study by the director of the Agribusiness Accountability Project, Jim Hightower, showed that in 1974, when chicken prices were running 80 to 90 cents a pound in the supermarket, the chicken farmers themselves were getting just two cents a pound.49 Of course, the corporate managers who are making the money love to portray themselves in the public eye as old-fashioned farmers. In one case, a number of the top executives of one of the international cartels that control the nation’s poultry production testified before Congress dressed in overalls.
An Assembly-Line Chicken in Every Pot
We are a nation with an assembly-line chicken in every pot. We do not know that we eat the bodies and eggs of tortured creatures. We do not know they have been inoculated, dosed with hormones and antibiotics, and injected with dyes so that their meat and yolks will appear to be a “healthy-looking” yellow. How far out of touch we have become, not only with animals but with our own taste buds, to be susceptible to being so deceived.
Some people are beginning to suspect, however, that today’s poultry products aren’t what they should be. The comedian George Burns spoke of the first time he ate scrambled eggs without ketchup.
I never knew they tasted like that. They tasted like the chicken wasn’t getting paid.
Needless to say, with money at stake, the industry isn’t taking the matter of tasteless chicken lying down. The trade journal Broiler Industry has come up with an idea they think will remedy the situation. It is an idea that exemplifies their whole approach to food production.
We’ve been accused of selling a chicken with less flavor than the “old-time” chicken… Attempts are being made at overcoming the flavor problem by injection.50
That should take care of everything!
In another issue, Broiler Industry saliently proposes:
It should be possible to uncover a material, or materials, that could impart that “old-fashioned flavor” to chickens.51
And if that doesn’t do the trick, don’t think for a moment that the agribusiness experts are going to admit defeat. In spite of the universal use of ever more chemicals and drugs in egg production today, one industry leader tersely advises a marketing strategy designed to take care of the problem once and for all. His suggestion?
Slant egg carton copy along this line: “Eggs are a health food. A natural human food. No additives, no preservatives.”52
I find the latest developments in poultry production truly disturbing. The huge multinational conglomerates, and those who must compete with them or be forced out of business, in their utter disregard for the suffering of innocent animals, have lost touch with something very basic.
Today’s egg and poultry consumers know nothing of this. We have been deliberately kept in the dark about what modern poultry production has become and have no idea of the relentless and systematic misery in which the chickens live. Every day people eat the flesh and eggs of these poor creatures, utterly unaware of what they have suffered.
What are the consequences of eating the products of such a system? Could it be that when we consume the flesh and eggs of these poor animals, something of the sickness, misery, and terror of their lives enters us? Could it be that when we take their flesh or eggs into our bodies, we take in as well something of the kind of life they have been forced to endure? Instinctively, I can’t help but believe this is so.
In Search of the Natural Bird
You may wonder whether you’d be better off eating turkey. Sorry, but the methods applied to the factory production of poultry and eggs are also applied today to other birds, such as turkeys, geese, and ducks.53 These birds are treated with equal disdain for their natural urges and needs, and equal fixation on using them for profit. Turkeys are de-beaked, stuffed into wire cages, and fed the same sort of unnatural diet as chickens, complete with chemicals, drugs, and antibiotics.54
There are, however, alternatives. One is to consume only free-range, organic, or natural poultry products. Natural food stores often carry items so labeled, but you have to be awfully careful. Words like “organic” and “natural” and “free range” mean different things to different people, and much money has been made by people lying about such terms. The USDA has regulations governing the use of the word “natural,” but these regulations are so loose that virtually anything can be so labeled. There are no restrictions at all on the use of antibiotics or on the housing conditions the animals must endure.
Some health food store owners are more scrupulous than others, but even the best of them may not know all the facts. Many in California carry “Happy Hen Ranch Fresh Eggs,” which come in a carton with a picture of a cheerful hen in the midst of luxurious fields. However, I’ve seen the socalled happy hens of the Happy Hen Ranch (near San Jose, California), and they do not look very happy to me. They do not live in the spacious fields depicted on the egg carton. They are kept in cages.
In 1986, East-West published a conscientious report titled “In Search of the Natural Chicken.” Their research found that almost all the poultry products currently sold in the United States as “natural” or “organic” come, unfortunately, from chickens whose living conditions are hardly better than the industry norm. Summarizing the investigation, the author noted, none too encouragingly:
Some eggs sold as “fertile, laid by free-range hens” are produced by hens that actually are kept in barns in a space no greater than those kept in cages…(With only two exceptions) no sellers of natural poultry products that we contacted suggested that their chickens enjoyed anything resembling a free-range existence.55
The best bet, if you really want to eat poultry products, is to raise them yourself or buy them from someone you know personally. A distant second would be to buy them from a natural food store, but you had better be willing to make a nuisance of yourself with lots of uncomfortable questions. The people who run the store should know the details of how the chickens whose eggs and flesh they sell have been raised and fed. If they don’t know, or if their answers are vague or evasive, then, unfortunately, the truth is likely not what you would wish it to be.
The Farm Animals Concern Trust (FACT) has established humane standards for keeping layer hens without cages. Farms complying with these standards are given use of the FACT trademark—NEST EGGS®. Though this is not yet widely available, if you buy eggs bearing this trademark, you can be sure you are not partaking of, or contributing to, the conditions described in this chapter.
An alternative many informed people are taking is to stop eating poultry products altogether. If you wonder whether you could satisfy your protein and other nutritional needs if you did not partake of the products of chicken factories, the answer, as chapters 6 through 10 will show, is an emphatic yes. The most rigorous scientific research has determined that these foods are far from the ultimate nutritional cornerstones the industry would like us to believe. In fact, they contribute mightily to the ravages of heart disease, cancer, strokes, and many other serious diseases.
I have too much respect for the human journey to take it upon myself to decide for you what you should or shouldn’t eat, and where you should draw the line. We are each unique. We have different needs, different emotional associations to different foods, and different biochemistry. We have our individual life situations to deal with, and our individual paths to forge. We are each of us responsible for our own choices and for the consequences of our choices. However, the better informed we are, the more intelligently we are able to make food choices that serve our true needs.
Now What?
The poultry producers consider themselves innocent of any wrongdoing. They say they do what they do to bring down the price we pay for our eggs and poultry. To that end, they claim they are simply people committed to a well-defined sense of purpose, which is to raise broilers for the slaughterhouse and