Chickening Out

Why is it important that the chicken I’m about to eat was allowed to roam freely, attend the school of its choosing and dream of a better life before it was slaughtered, cut up and packaged? 

I’ve never understood the concept of free range chickens as evidence that we treat our meat-to-be humanely.  No matter how much we sweet talk it and allow it free will, it’s still going to end up under herbs in the oven.  I’m not suggesting the birds should be mistreated just because they’re going to be food. But don’t go telling me you run a better poultry supply company because your chickens have nicknames.

Recently one of the country’s largest poultry producers was charged with several counts of cruelty because some chickens died on the way to the processing plant.  They apparently froze to death in the truck.  Now, if you know me at all you know I ache at the thought of an animal being hurt but I’m also realistic.  These were birds meant to be breaded and put into buckets. Are we really saying the producers are bad people because the birds’ social visit on the way to meet their maker (or their baker) was cut short by cold weather?

It seems to me that some animals are cute and cuddly so they become pets and others are delicious with a side of potatoes so they become entrees.  I visited the cattle slaughterhouse with my uncle, a butcher, just once when I was a kid.  It was horrifying.  I won’t describe it to you because then you’d have the nightmares, like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs.  Things have changed a lot since then.  But before we as a society go patting ourselves on the back for the lovely way we treat our food when it still has a pulse, I think we need to take a step back and ask ourselves this question: If aliens landed on earth tomorrow and we explained this entire concept to them, would we seem completely insane?