Ignorance Was Bliss

It truly was, but knowing what I know now, I am disturbed. I have thought this a lot lately but especially when I watch documentaries like Food Inc. or King Corn, I realize how ignorant I am and choose to be when it comes to an industry I one day want to make a career out of.

The problem I have is I want to be in the agriculture field because I love animals, but for the most part animals in the agriculture industry are to be processed for meat. I also don't have a problem with that, I have raised livestock since I was nine years old, and I loved these pets, but I always knew that the end goal would be for them to be food for someone. These pets always had the best life anyone could ever give them.. they got fed the right amount, they had a big, clean, space to live in, and they got bathed on a regular basis. I loved these animals, which is what I think every animal deserves.

But I am not delusional. I know that not every livestock animal needs the pristine care that I gave my animals.  The animals I raised were raised for show, it was important that their coats were silky, and shaved and combed in the right way.  The animals that we raise to eat don't need these things, but they also do NOT deserve to be treated in a way that some large meat producers treat their animals.

As consumers, we demand cheap food in mass quantities, but in reality producing this food is anything but cheap. We want chickens with as much meat packed onto small bones as possible so that when we are weighing the chicken we get as much meat for our dollar as possible. But what does this mean for the chicken? This means that the chick has to grow from a little, tiny chick to a full grown bird at three in a half pounds in as little as four weeks. This results in chickens that are so fat that their bones can't support them and they can barley walk because their bones have not had time to develop quick enough to keep up with the weight they have to carry. Birds will eat all day long if food is in front of them and this is what producers let them do, they eat all day long instead of feeding them in proper limited amounts, turning them into the obese birds that we demand. Birds with huge thighs and breasts.

But it wouldn't matter if they were physically able to walk, because they are not given any room to walk anyway. Chickens are usually mass produced in broiler houses, with limited room so that it is less likely that their meat is bruised. This makes me so angry, and I could go on and on about the mistreatment of these birds, but I'm sure that you can get what I am trying to tell you by looking at these next pictures. Keep in mind that this is NORMAL for raising the meat that you see in stores, but it can be even worse as most chickens raised for huge companies like Tyson will never see sunlight.

THE GOOD THING IS, THIS ISN'T THE LIFE THAT ALL CHICKENS HAVE. 

I am so happy that I work on St. John's Family Farm. We raise broiler chickens, turkeys, pigs, and layer chickens, and I am proud to say that all of them have very happy lives. They all are given time to grow at normal rates with TONS of clean living area. They are not abused in any way. 

It was so easy for me to go to the store and pick out the cheapest chicken breast at grocery store, but now it is so hard knowing how much the chicken had to pay for its meat to be so cheap. Don't be ignorant. Know where your meat is coming from and how it was treated.