Chickens

As a kid you grow up learning new things, you ask questions and you hope that in return you get answers. A question that is often asked is ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg, or how is our food made?’ Many people find answers for things that they don’t know about, but what one doesn’t know might be better for them. What I can tell you is how chickens are raised and the many different ways that they are brought up. What I cant tell you is what came first, the chicken or the egg. I can tell you the difference from a chicken that was brought up in a factory farm from a chicken that was brought up in your back yard. There is a big difference from a factory chicken from a back yard chicken, such as the type of food they are fed, or their living space. Chickens are fed foods that have chemicals in them that can get into the human body. They are also tortured when they are brought up in factories because the chickens are kept in cages where there for four of them will be stuffed into one cage. Chickens are clipped on their feet and beaks so that when they are in a stressful situation they will not peck at the other chickens when they are all in the same cage. Chickens are carried from one factory to another in a truck where over half of the chickens die.

The government call these facilities Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO’s. The (EPA) otherwise known as the Environmental Protection Agency defines a CAFO as the “new and existing operations which stable or confine and feed or maintain for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period more than the number of animals specified” in categories that they list out. Also there will be no grass or other vegetation in the confined areas.

Factory farming mainly began a...

... middle of paper ...

...es and fats.

Pasturing is also a cost-effective and healthy way to raise chickens. It is both good for the environment and the chicken itself. Chickens that are brought up on a farm have a better life and their meat is healthier for the consumer. If you go out and buy chicken from a store, you have no idea what kind of process that meat has been through or what has been added to it. You could be eating something that could get you very sick or even kill you. Factories should have law and those laws should state that artificial growth is illegal and not healthy for our food. If every person in the world took a step back and realized how our everyday food effects our lives or the environment around us we might find better ways to make a profit. So the next time you go to ask a question about where something comes from, you might want to think twice about it.