I got a thing about chickens.

I was in a van with some co-workers yesterday and we passed a truck headed to Sanderson Farms.  Sanderson Farms is a large local employer and operates huge regional chicken processing plants.  The truck was stacked about 10 cages high with multiple animals in each cage.  Chickens off to processing.

Now I'm not a militant animal rights vegan.  My choice is about health.  Looking at the bottom cages on the truck, the yellow and brown birds, colored by the waste of the 20 animals above it....I'm happy I have made the choice.

I did a little research about chickens.  Yikes!

Thanks to advances in hormones and genetic engineering, chickens are as young as 30 day old when big enough to slaughter. The availability of cheap antibiotics means it's cost effective to let them

steep in shit and piss rather than provide more room or sanitary conditions. 

I wont steal PETA's thunder and describe the conditions inside the plant but if you go in for that kind of thing here's  a video Tortured By Tyson

Eating things because they are easy (fast food) or cheap, or taste good is short sighted, foolish and childish.  Most of the "taste" in processed foods is achieved thru chemistry and seasoning anyway. Take away the salt, added fat, chemical smell enhancement, breading and THEN try to choke down a chicken nugget. 

Chickens aren't inherently filthy animals, the way they are processed makes them so.  In fact all modern meat processing is hideous and horrifying.  Things have changed since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle but not as much as we'd like.  I read Fast Food Nation in 2005 and it scared me then...not enough to quit eating meat but I can't escape the knowledge that... There's shit in the meat at every fast food restaurant in America. 

I tried to find a clip from the movie Fast Food Nation where Bruce Willis tells Greg Kineer "Of course there's shit in the meat" but I could only find it in Spanish (c'è merda nella carrne!).  Bruce does a cameo as the meat buyer for a national burger chain.  Great scene in a so-so movie.

If you eat processed meat, you litteraly eat shit. There's no way around it, except to not eat meat. 

But back to the chicken truck.  I pointed out the filthy birds on the bottom to my co-workers and one explained "You just have to not think about it."  Well that's one option.  I'll take Jules' advice and refuse to dig on filthy animals, no matter how charming.