Know your chickens? - PART III laying hens
The companions of the poor broiler hens swim in water as putrid. In nature, chickens walk long distances and spend much of their time searching for food, living in small groups with complex social organization based on a clear hierarchy, trying to create secluded areas where the nests to lay and hatch their eggs and use the trees to roost away from the threats of predators during the night. The hens have a strong need to stretch their wings, have a good care of their feathers and make regular baths earth. In the barren battery cages that are destined to live, none of these behaviors is possible. Every year on
EU territory are raised over 400 million laying hens, of which 68% is confined to live in battery cages of factory farms. At the age of 120 days the chickens are being introduced on farms consisting of warehouses capable of holding thousands of animals. The number of animals depends on the size of the plant: for a medium hall of 110x15 m can be reached 70.000 copies
[1] .
The life of each hen spent over an area of \u200b\u200b550 cm ^ 2 (which is too often reduced to 450 cm ^ 2), less than an A4 sheet, in which it is impossible to make every kind of animal movement, even how to open the most basic wings, walk or simply turn in the cage without difficulty. Are bound to one place: in a row along the manger. The cages can accommodate 3:00 to 4:00, and copies are stacked in piles from 3:00 to 5:00 file (in America, ranging from three to nine in Japan up to 18 rows in height
[2] ) within great warehouses with no windows, which require forced ventilation, given the high level of ammonia produced from animal manure.
The floor of wire mesh cage, which is necessary to drain away urine and feces, causes severe injuries and deformities of the feet and claws of animals. In nature, the nails of the hens are consumed during the search for food in battery cages is not the case and nails grow out of proportion to backfire and break up with serious health consequences. Feet and legs damaged reduce the ability of hens to move and sometimes perform basic needs such as finding food and water. The floor of wire mesh, inclined to allow the eggs to roll towards the front of the cage, making it more difficult for animals to stand upright comfortably.
The continuous agitation of the animal and beat against the walls of the cage is due to abrasions, wounds and loss of feathers in the wings and in large parts of the body. The forced immobility causes atrophy of the muscles of the wings and legs. Due to the high productivity, chickens accuse a continuous loss of calcium - needed to form the shells of eggs - up to develop serious Osteoporosis: many hens to be paralyzed so they end up dying of hunger and thirst no one intervenes.
Infections due to the presence of ammonia and toxic gases from manure
Even laying hens live under constant artificial lighting 20 hours a day. In this way the producers of eggs reprogram the clock to force the hens to lay more eggs, faster and above all at the same time with their neighbors. A hen who lives in kind of winter is just a very few eggs because the day is short and there is no light, essential for stimulating hormone production and therefore increased ovulation. Factory farms is summer all year round. Artificial lighting uninterrupted continuously stimulates the endocrine system, resulting in increased egg production.
The eggs are immediately removed from the hen that so completely lost the instinct of hatching and, increasingly confused, continues to produce other non-stop, almost 300 per year, two or three times more than they would have produced in nature. The continuous lighting will also cause them any problems described above. There will be no salvation or relief. Laying hens are
slaughtered after the first year of production (approximately 70 weeks) because the latter does not produce as many eggs: the industry has determined that it is cheaper to slaughter it and start all over again rather than to feed chickens and keep healthy, live longer and lay fewer eggs . However, it is often induced "changes forced" to extend the productivity of hens. In nature, the suit takes place once a year in order to renew their feathers, reconstitute the reproductive system and strengthen the skeleton. On farms, when the egg-laying decreases the lights go down, total darkness. The hens are fed a diet low in protein, almost pitiful, to lead them to the pack early. After a couple of weeks (which may be a month or two depending on the technique used), when they lost all their feathers, the activity of the poor hens resumed in full swing for another 24 - 28 weeks
[3] . Then peace. Meat will be sold as second choice because they are too thin and wasted.
addition to the mental cruelty inflicted on these poor animals, the environment in which they live results serious physical problems. Crowding, stress and unnatural conditions of life bring a strain on the body of animals. Their ability to resist pathogens is greatly weakened. The control and treatment of each individual bird is impossible. Farmers are unable to identify the sick animal out of the thousands of animals "healthy" for which prophylaxis is performed on all without distinction. The war against bacterial infections will go from first to last day of life placed on antibiotics in animal feed. To combat viruses these animals are pumped full of vaccines that suppress the external manifestation of the virus, allowing only apparently healthy animals that are regularly traded in, the risk that the virus is transferred from man. Chicks for the production of eggs will be injected the first three vaccinations within the first two hours of life. Before laying the first egg at the age of 120 days, the hen will have received more or less 20
vaccinations [4] . For broilers
antibiotics are also used to drive the growth: the administration of molecules determines the absorption of water into the meat resulting in weight gain at the expense of animal health (and our)
[ 5] . To feed themselves and inflate their disposal only feed industry, with the addition of chemicals to increase palatability. Maize and soybeans, which are the main components (up to 60-70 per cent), often in very large part of import and production of transgenic, because they cost less. The regulations allow the poultry feed may contain meat and fish, waste oil and animal fats. Even animal proteins derived from the waste of the slaughter of chickens killed earlier (entrails, heads, legs ...) are constituents of the feed, leading to cannibalism in fact animals. Used oil engine, to the extent permitted by law, may be used to feed chickens
[6] . To obtain eggs from the yolks bright yellow, farmers administer to hens feed similar to those of broilers but enriched with dyes
[7] .
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published the results of a survey of 561 slaughterhouses in the European Union as well as Norway and Switzerland
[8] . All member states participating in the survey reported the presence of Campylobacter in chicken samples collected. Salmonella also has been found but less frequently. Campylobacter, Salmonella typhimurium and parathyphimurium, Escherichia coli are the major pathogens, resulting mainly from consumption of animal products, which have developed resistance to antibiotics and representing therefore a danger to our health.
In these farms the death of a bird is a frequent occurrence, but the economic value of an individual bird is so low that even the death of many of them do not justify the expenditure necessary to improve the lives of animals. Every day the farmers have to collect and dispose of animals dead or dying. The broilers that grow not indicated in the instruction manual and unproductive hens are collected in plastic bags and suffocated or thrown directly into garbage cans.
This is the way he lives the chicken you eat. The phantom (natural) food chain, much vaunted as an explanation (or excuse) for why the man eating meat is this: animals are created in the laboratory and can not walk, to reproduce (reproduction occurs naturally for artificial insemination), which we force to live in unnatural conditions, unbearable, in tight spaces, no one enjoys the open air or heat the sun, no one is able to express the behavior of the species as nest, perch, explore the environment, to form stable social relationships, rampant disease, suffering is the rule.
The story unfortunately does not end there life after weaning and remains only to describe the death (slaughter and processing), but this will be the subject of my next post. Those who think, as I had naively I did, that death is a relief for these poor animals, forced to a life of painful and shameful, he discovers that he is mistaken.
notes on the video and I invite you to look at really. All that has been written so far is the basic operation of any intensive farming of laying hens, unfortunately happens in these hellish places of the other. The daily violence inflicted by workers on these animals is petrifying, look to see what I mean.
http://laverabestia.org/play.php?vid=184 http://laverabestia.org/play.php?vid=922 Torture does not lower the cost of eggs produced, not make them better, bigger, more protein, poor cholesterol levels. There is no justification for everything, you can not defend the system, you can not think of humans if you participate (directly or indirittamente) to this horror.
From "if nothing matters - Jonathan Safran Foer" about the battery cages:
"
Log mentally in a crowded elevator, a lift so crowded that you can not turn around without bumping (exasperation) against your neighbor. A lift so crowded that often remains raised in the air. That is a kind of blessing, because the sloping floor is made of wire that cuts you off your feet.
After a while 'those who are in the elevator will lose the ability to work in the interests of the group. Some become violent, others go crazy. Some, deprived of food and hope, will turn to cannibalism. There is no respite, no relief. No employee will not come to repair the elevator. The doors will open only once, at the end of your life, to bring in the one place worse .
Think.
CONTINUE ...
[1]
http://www.ispesl.it / profili_di_rischio / allevamento_avicolo / intro.pdf [2]
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060820rp.html [3]
http://www2.vet.unibo.it / staff/luca.sardi/aviconiglicoltura/6% 20 -%% 20uova 20Produzione% 20and% 20da% 20consumo.pdf [4]
http://www.oltrelaspecie.org/viaggioallevamenti.htm [5]
http://www.lav.it/uploads/13/3820_4898_BROCHURE_POLLI.pdf [6]
http: / / www.medicinenon.it/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=34 [7]
http://www.newsfood.com/q/c8a72e38/tuorlo-ben-rosso-merito -del-dye / [8]
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/it/scdocs/doc/1503.pdf
