Battery Poultry

A friend of mine sent this to me today.Please spend a little time reading this message.It is not a joke but is a true account from an ex worker....

The reason I am posting this is, if it only makes one person think of an alternative to buying mass produced chicken/turkey for dinner, or mass produced eggs, then it is worth it.
please try to seek out and use the local farm in your area, 9 out of 10 sell eggs and birds for the table.


Many years ago i worked on poultry farms, ( this is why i changed my life style after i saw the goings on ) but i must say NOT for BM.
I worked on chicken farms.
hatchery, then on to growers, then to egg collecting then on to dispatching.
it was horrendous !!

from the moment the chicks are hatched, they are treated roughly. pullets down one chute, cockerels down another. cockerels off to be gassed pullets on to the growing farms. i became ill ( as others did ) with salmonella and was off work 6 months. the factory eventually closed ...thankfully.

I then went on to collecting hatching eggs for another company.......let me describe the conditions....4 large sheds.......each shed having 4 departments.....each department containing 3,000 hens and 1,000 cockerels.!!!
each bird had enough room to move about 1 foot before it was in anothers territory. ....there were fights and squabbles amongst the hens.......and terrible fights within the cockerels too.......bloody fights.......as you walk in amongst them the cockerels would attack you.......when telling my boss, his reply was, carry the stick with you and hit them, if they come back and attack again, kill them !!!!
I could not stand more than one day there, so I went on to growers.......again there were massive sheds....11 in total...each shed would house 16,000 adult birds. the dayolds were brought in and fed on paper...so many tiny little bodies in these massive sheds........within a few weeks the sheds were becoming over crowded as the pullets grew........eventually there was barely walking room between each bird...i was moved to the dispatching dept of the company.....and that was even worse....
the poor birds are brought in in crates, manhandled then strung up.........WHEN THEY ARE STILL ALIVE !!! they are then dropped, ALIVE headfirst, into drums of ( the name escapes me at the minute ) but it is to make the feathers drop out, by this time they are dead.

one of the most horrific aspects of the rearing sheds is birds die !! they are on sawdust. as a bird dies it gets buried in the sawdust, trampled on by the thousands of others, even eaten...if the worker is observant enough they will remove the bird, and it can be incinerated.....but the last place i worked they would let the birds mount up and have a burn up once a week....because as they said '' it costs alot to start up the incinerater, and someone has to load it, so it is a collecter less in the sheds !!.......
once the birds are in the sheds, they only come out to be slaughtered, and no birds are added either.......they never see daylight. it is even worse for turkeys because when they are frightened they tend to die.

so with BM turkeys it is the same. to me there are only certain ways this got in the factory......either with contaminated birds (dayolds), or contaminated people ( keeper ) or the food.

THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!

i even took a job on a ''free range'' poulty farm just outside winchester.
i had passed it many times and thought it looked good. i jumped at the chance to work there collecting eggs.....
i really enjoyed the first few days there, as the birds were happy and content...untill i was given a job in another part of the farm......at the back...the part the gen public DO NOT SEE........it was a battery farm.....hundreds of thousands of caged birds all laying eggs, they wanted me to collect them aswell.........disgusting.......that finished me.....

that was why i changed my lifestyle to that of keeping birds myself......i used to take ex batt birds, i had 300 in total........

batt farming, no matter what way it is disguised, should be stopped.

because this is an open forum i have not gone into too much detail of how birds are treated !

it would be good if all the BM and factory farms are closed....but the sad fact is, if they are closed it will leave an opening in the poultry market for some-one else to close it and take over.

unless we, the general public, do something about it.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this...

 

Thank you for sharing your information with us kandifloss. I also want to add that: if you spot some dark patches on the "elbow" of some chicken legs, don't buy them.
It means that the poultry has been kept in overcrowded condition, as the marks are caused by the ammonia contained in the chicken body waste on which they lied down and "burned" their skin.

 

I had seen that on a programme as well Miraflores.The problem is the population is brainwashed into eating more white meat products because they are supposedly better for our health but at the expence of those poor birds.Whatever we eat whether it is cows sheep and pigs or poultry there will always be a problem one way or another...I think even fish that we catch from the seas have a bad time of it before it gets to our plates.What a way to die slowly suffocating or having the heads bashed in :eek:

 

Why are they farming BM, I am not livestock!

It is very yuk! we get local birds only. I saw a programme miraflores which pointed out what you just said. Also it reported that employees were playing football with fresh supermarket birds on the packaging production line.

 

It'll put a lot of people out of work, but it would be nice if Bernard went broke over this affair. He's had it too good too long.

I expect he'll just restock and carry on the whole nasty buisness.

 

They say that a lot of the workers come from abroad anyway so they will probably catch the next ferry home

 

Bernard gets by very nicely thank you very much, as do all the supermarkets that sell their poultry produce as free range, barn reared. Organic etc etc etc. Any chicken sold in a super market even free range or barn reared has been kept in very unhealthy conditions. But the population demands cheap chicken that is not battery, and the population gets it. but there's not alot of difference. Eggs on the shelves in supermarkets are atleast 3 wks old. OH and for those who think that chicks hatching out of s/mrkt eggs proves they are fresh, think again. An egg is viable for hatching up to 3wks after being laid. So next time you buy a Barn fresh or Free range egg and it spreads around the frying pan, just think it's atleast 10 days old!!!!!!!!
My eggs are collected daily and sold or disposed of by 3 days old. They hold their shape, are deep yellow in olk and cheaper than shopbought. I even got hens that lay posh blue eggs, They don't cost no more to be fed and therefore get sold at same price.ok i'm getting off my soap box. I can't be bothered to be opposed to shop bought eggs, just the labels that imply an easy charmed life.

 

This is one reason why i wish i could keep chickens. At present the conditions of the lease prevent us. Supermarket chicken is so tasteless. Not like some we had from Fordhall Farm , the organic farm near Market Drayton some years ago. They were also free range, they were running round the field as we drove up.
Some years ago a colleague of mine was a part time farmer and was offering free range geese for Christmas. A friend had arranged to pick one up and drove up to the farm to collect, expecting it to be packaged in a poly bag just like the supermarket.
He asked "is my goose ready?"
To which the reply was "Yes, you can go get it now"
"Well where is it then"
"Its that one running up that side of the field"
Don't know whether Kelvin did get his goose or not!
Pork is another meat that is tasteless. They reckon that after poultry pigs get the next worst deal in present day factory farming. I don't want to be a vegetarian but i do want quality meat from animals that have been treated humanely and been able to follow their natural instincts. Chickens need to peck in the dirt and pigs need to root.

 

We tend to do farm holidays when we go and I always eat loads of fresh eggs. Fantastic flavour and colour. Always bring a load home too. We often have salmon (which has its own issues I guess) for sunday lunch as an alternative to traditional meat roasts.

 

Can't do it anywhere else, BM Babe, empty your mailbox...

 

Tis done.

 

I allready knew all of what has been written here..but its something that makes people a bit like an ostrich !!
I dont eat much meat at all as i have never liked it but after reading this well the turkeys and chickens i do buy will definately be from a decent source..
I have to say also that a lot of nasty substandard meat goes into pet food and its no wonder some dogs /cats have problems..

 

thanks for sharing the information kandyfloss, I can believe this happening, I get my eggs from a local shop they get their eggs from a local farm not a battery place and mind i get lovely large eggs, I dont eat much meat myself not a lover of it, I do buy chicken occasionally will certainly watch from now were i buy it from.

 

Some pet foods contain better grade meat than some sausages ! :eek: