by Gerald Buck

Created on: January 19, 2008

Should Chickens Be added to the humane slaughter non-sense? Come on folks, where do we draw the line? Chicken, as well as beef and pork, are a very important source of protein for a lot of people. If you have to change the way a manufacturing plant kills the birds, you are going to raise the cost of the end product. Most people do not want to know where their meat(Protein) comes from, nor do they care, so long as it is safe to eat.

Most processors are very aware of the fact that an excited bird, or any other animal, does not taste as good as an un-excited one that was treated humanely as it was going into the killing room. I know of a poultry processing plant that fired an entire shift of workers, including the supervisor, because they were "cruel" to the birds as they entered into the processing. These animal rights activist will get a film clip of an act of cruelty happening in a processing plant and will play it over and over and tell the world that all processing plants are like that.

What they do not tell you is they had to wait weeks and weeks to get the clip. They don't show you the humane way the birds are killed 99.9% of the time. Why? Because it is not sensational enough and it won't pull in donations to their organization. (As an aside, check out the finances of some of these organization. The directors make an awful lot of money from gullible donors.)

Trying to treat a chicken like it was a human is not going to work. Chickens can be very mean to each other. They can be cannibals, they will kill their own young, eat their own eggs. I have had chickens as pets and currently raise them for food. When it comes time for the Sunday dinner, I get the hatchet and pick out the bird. A quick chop and the head comes off and the chicken is allowed to bled out. In the processing factories, the have a machine that cuts the chicken head off. These machines move thousands of birds every hour. The birds are hung up, bled out (You have to get as much blood out of the meat as possible so it will taste good.) and moved on to the processing line.

I do not know how you could "Humanely" kill a chicken. Lethal injection? Firing Squad? Hanging? Asphyxiation? None of these would work if you wanted to salvage the meat. They have to be bled out.

What happens when chickens are added to the list? Do we then look for something else to add to the list? In my humble opinion PETA is a bunch of mislead idealist who have too much time on their hands. I wish they would do something useful, like work in a homeless shelter, a food pantry, etc. There are a lot of worthwhile organization out there that could use some dedicated help.

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