![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.upc-online.org\/winter99\/tyson_slaughter.jpg\")
Here\u2019s an interesting piece about denial and how chickens are killed from the NYTimes: click here<\/a>. The jist is that some chicken slaughterhouses are starting to gas chickens before hanging them upside down and slitting their throats.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
The picture above, btw, is one of the nicer shots of birds from a Google Images \u201cchicken slaughter\u201d search. My almost 14-year old son, an avowed carnivore, saw this post just before I published it and said, \u201cDad, don\u2019t show people that nasty stuff.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Chicken already come<\/span>s free-range, cage-free, antibiotic-free, raised on <\/a><\/u><\/span>vegetarian<\/a><\/u> <\/u>feed, organic, and even air-chilled. <\/span><\/span>Now some \u201cproducers\u201d are following the Europeans and putting the birdies to sleep before they kill \u2019em.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The trouble they\u2019re having is how to gently let us know that we\u2019re not buying a chicken that was all stressed out before it\u2019s throat was slit so we might buy their kinder, gentler brand.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Now I\u2019m vegetarian (mostly) these days but I\u2019m not putting this out there because I\u2019m feeling all self-righteous. I\u2019ve eaten more than my share of chickens, I\u2019m sure.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This topic interests me in part because I spent a lot of time taking care of chickens as a youngster. I didn\u2019t like them much, honestly, and found them not-so-easy to relate with, didn\u2019t ever really experience that bonding feeling that you can with many other creatures.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2026. And so we raised chickens from little, cute chicks to \u201cfryers.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They all seemed to know the end was near, hunching down in the pen and squawking quietly even as we prepared for butchering \u2013 stressed out. And despite what the spokespeople for the corporations say, chickens do not like to be hung upside down.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s 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 \u201cchicken slaughter\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/4330911338438640912-216794918952793949?l=wildfoxzen.blogspot.com\")