How We Kill Chickens is How We Do Everything … Maybe

Here’s an interesting piece about denial and how chickens are killed from the NYTimes: click here. The jist is that some chicken slaughterhouses are starting to gas chickens before hanging them upside down and slitting their throats.

The picture above, btw, is one of the nicer shots of birds from a Google Images “chicken slaughter” search. My almost 14-year old son, an avowed carnivore, saw this post just before I published it and said, “Dad, don’t show people that nasty stuff.” 

Chicken already comes free-range, cage-free, antibiotic-free, raised on vegetarian feed, organic, and even air-chilled. Now some “producers” are following the Europeans and putting the birdies to sleep before they kill ’em. 

The trouble they’re having is how to gently let us know that we’re not buying a chicken that was all stressed out before it’s throat was slit so we might buy their kinder, gentler brand.

Now I’m vegetarian (mostly) these days but I’m not putting this out there because I’m feeling all self-righteous. I’ve eaten more than my share of chickens, I’m sure. 

This topic interests me in part because I spent a lot of time taking care of chickens as a youngster. I didn’t like them much, honestly, and found them not-so-easy to relate with, didn’t ever really experience that bonding feeling that you can with many other creatures. 

I grew up poor. In fact, when my dad was a kid he had to wake up a 5am and milk 50 cows and walk 5 miles to school in the snow barefoot, uphill both ways…. And so we raised chickens from little, cute chicks to “fryers.” My dad and I butchered and my mom froze, canned, and creamed many hundreds and they were all rather stressed before the hatchet whacked off their little heads. 

They all seemed to know the end was near, hunching down in the pen and squawking quietly even as we prepared for butchering – stressed out. And despite what the spokespeople for the corporations say, chickens do not like to be hung upside down.

Nevertheless, we ate chicken a lot. The other kids in school even teased me about the vast number of ways that my mom prepared my lunch but it still was mostly chicken.

Anyway, in terms of awareness and Zen and all, the way we avoid death, even how we avoid straight talk about how we kill what we eat, seems really symptomatic to me.