Sunday, November 30, 2008
Chickening Out
I’m heading into my first winter caring for chickens, although they’re not mine alone - I’m doing it with a club of cohousing neighbors. Through a confluence of the economic downturn and the interest in local food, backyard chicken hobbyists are an increasing breed.
My initial interest in them was mostly about knowing where my food comes from – I know chickens are raised in pretty despicable conditions usually, and organic standards don’t mean too much in terms of giving the chickens a good life. Even if it cost me more to get eggs from our chickens than it would to buy them from the store, at least I would have more guilt-free eggs. But a few news stories recently have me more convinced that industrial chicken farming is dangerous, and not just to chickens, and I’m happier and happier with my undertaking with our five hens here at home!
Problem number one - antibiotic resistant bacteria. The common practice of giving routine antibiotics to farm animals, including chickens, has been leading to antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains - not to mention medication traces in the waste products of the animals and in their meat and eggs. Tyson has recently been advertising that their chickens are raised without antibiotics. Turns out that cheery claim skirts around the fact that they now inject eggs with antibiotics a few days before they hatch. Grim.
Two other recent articles about pollution from industrial chicken farming have me more depressed about the practice - first a medical study finding that antibiotic-resistant bacteria find their way from open poultry transport trucks into people’s personal cars and on the door handles. I’ve certainly driven past poultry trucks many times... and I remember seeing them parked outside the Kensington market slaughterhouse in Toronto on St. Anthony’s Street. With all the dust and feathers coming out of those trucks it shouldn’t be that surprising, I guess - but it’s scary to think that even if you don’t consume chicken products yourself, you’re being affected by industrial chicken farming.
The other news story that caught my attention was about water pollution from industrial chicken farming in Maryland. The phosphorus and nitrogen levels from the chicken waste pollute the Chesapeake Bay so much that oyster and crab catches have gone way down, and algae blooms are taking over. Having grown up in Baltimore in the early 1980s it’s sad to hear we’re still abusing the Chesapeake so much. And it’s shocking to see the sheer numbers involved in industrial chicken farming - tens of thousands of chickens crammed into one barn - it’s unimaginable to me even though we’ve had our five ladies in a fairly small coop - they’ve had room for their basic needs and have been happily laying without much artificial input - just some chicken feed and oyster shell. And guess what - the industrial chicken farming ties in to corn and soy, too - according to this New York Times article, 75% of Maryland’s corn and soy crop go to feeding chickens. Chicken is made out of corn... ours are, too, though we also give them kitchen scraps and clover and the occasional bug. The other sadness point in the article is that chicken manure used to be a coveted fertilizer for Maryland’s sandy soil, but now there’s more than can be supported. I bet those corn and soy fields are being fertilized with petrochemicals anyway, so there’s nowhere for the chicken waste to go. My garden has received some good old chicken poop and seems to have thrived with it. I’m composting some for next year or so, too.
Finally want to mention a few bloggers who are coincidentally into chickens - I was into their blogs before I was into chickens or knew they were, but I’ve been happy to find that my “peeps” on the internet are raising chickens or interested. The Crunchy Domestic Goddess is just delving in - her efforts are here: http://longmont-urbanhens.blogspot.com/ and the family at http://www.foggypondfarm.com/ has been doing the chicken thing longer than I have. And of course Sharon Astyk of the fascinating and scary blog Casaubon’s Book keeps chickens, too - http://sharonastyk.com/category/chickens/.
Photo credit: Picture is of two barred rocks, from http://flickr.com/photos/essjay/ under CC License.
