Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

I walked around inside several turkey houses yesterday for the first time.

Amongst these thousands of ugly animals, I kept thinking, 'what's all the fuss about this being inhumane?' It certainly is not. In fact, the grower has huge incentive to keep the birds in the best of health, otherwise the animal dies and is a loss for the company.

When talking to most people who live in and around cities, the feeling is that animal rearing facilities are horrible hell holes. This attitude is also in force in the book Omnivore's Dilemma which I read a year ago. In the entire book, it's just assumed that "industrial" animal-rearing facilities are cruel. I disagree.

First, broiler chickens and turkeys are not raised in cages. They are raised in open-floor housing that's nearly double the size of a football field -- huge. They do pack a massive number of birds in that space, as you can see in this picture, but as soon as you walk amongst the birds and they move out of the way, you can see that they have plenty of room to walk around. The only time these birds are in cages is the few minutes when they are put on the truck to the slaughterhouse where they are very quickly killed.

Most poultry raised in tight cages are for eggs, so, ironically, if you are an ovo-lacto vegetarian -- but not vegan -- your ethical choice is arguably worse than someone who eats meat but not eggs. How ironic. (BTW, I do not believe that keeping layer chickens in cages is cruel).

I also visited a house where they had just introduced 2-day-old turkey poults. These little guys have to be taught how to eat, drink and sometimes stand. I noticed that several of the baby birds had fallen over and I thought they were dying, but apparently these birds just aren't strong enough to stand on their own so it's the farmer's job to stand them back up by hand and get them tromping around again. It was sweet watching the farm manager give such care -- kind of like the time I was in the Philippines and the shrimp farmer actually gave little massages to the shrimp he thought were suffering from cramps.

I have yet to visit a slaughterhouse but I have seen video of how meat animals are killed. This also is entirely humane to any reasonable person.

People -- especially those in urban areas -- should feel fine about the meat they eat. Maybe most people are squeamish and delicate about this, but if they visited a poultry house, they would see that it's perfectly humane and as professionally-run as possible. If you're unsure how you feel, get over it or become a vegan; those are the only two legitimate choices.