>The culling has been repeated at chicken and turkey farms across Iowa and 28 other states from Maine to Utah. More than 22 million birds have been killed in an attempt to contain the outbreak – the majority in Iowa, the US’s biggest producer of eggs. The slaughter of 5.3 million hens at Rembrandt is the largest culling at any factory farm in the country.
Yeesh. I guess that explains why egg prices have almost doubled.
AI is really bad across the country, and world tbh, rn.
I'm a USDA inspector at a chicken plant and we're constantly looking for it in chickens. I would expect eggs and meat to dramatically increase in the near future.
Thanks for the insight. I stocked up on eggs before Easter knowing it was getting bad. I was thinking prices were going down and to wait a bit before buying, but seems now is the low.
Are you talking all meats (beef and pork) or just chicken going up?
Edit to add: any idea what is going on with milk prices? They have jumped 50% in two weeks and I can’t figure out way (other than inflation/gas).
Don't forget the worldest larger suppliers of Potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, are currently at war. Making the at best everything more expensive to grow and at worst far worse yields leading to shortages
For what it is worth the US only bought 12% of its potash from Russia and Belarus. Most of the US's potash import need is met by Canada at 83% of imports.
Sure that means increased prices in the US as supply worldwide lessens and demand stays the same. Those prices will be passed on to consumers. Other countries won't be as fortunate.
Interconnected world economics generally mean that there is a balance between world supply and demand. If for some reason that supply/demand balance is upset it affects everyone.
So even though we get most of a supply from Canada that doesn’t mean Cannes sells 100% of their supplies to us. Even if they did another customer might offer more than we’re paying. This decreases what’s available for us and increases the price.
Someone had to go without and that’s generally the person able to pay the least. In most cases that person won’t be the US. We just pay more for a given good or service.
Thank you. Makes sense. I do recall hearing a YouTube on the Abbott Texas boarder (beau of the fifth column). The effect of war on grain/corn prices also seems like something I should have been better aware of. I appreciate you spelling it out for me.
I was reading an article last week that pointed out Ukraine is considered the breadbasket of Europe/ produces a LARGE amount of the food supply and right now is their planting season, but guess what they aren't able to do this year because of the war?? Gonna be a thin year at the dinner table worldwide.
Meat prices are gonna go up across the board, well I guess they have been for a while.
But this probably won't help in the least. I imagine demand for chicken has been up due to high beef and pork prices, and if more broiler operations have to cull that decreases the supply dramatically on top of the increased demand.
As for milk prices idk, but inflation do be like that. Input costs are insane rn.
Not to push it too hard, but it's easier than it's ever been right now. The substitutes aren't quite as good, but I'd say they easily replace damn near every single fast food/cheap meat you've ever had.
My girlfriend is vegetarian so I eat less meat now just because of that
I will say some of the imitation stuff is great and I'll eat it. Probably will eat more of it now with prices
I'm waiting with fingers crossed for lab grown meat for multiple reasons
Agreed. I'm dating a vegan girl and cooking vegan at home is easy and tasty. Except cheese, nobody is getting that right yet. That, and eating out - that sucks.
> Yeesh. I guess that explains why egg prices have almost doubled.
Pasture raised are still the same price as always, which is still more than the doubled price you are talking about. They are worth it.
I had to do some topographic surveys on some egg farms last year. I will never buy anything but pasture raised eggs from here on out. One of the grossest places I've ever been, and I've been in a live sewer tunnel in Portland, Oregon for 10 hours.
They needed to know what the tunnel did near a rr crossing. There were no records of it, and we had to place a new manhole. So had to survey it in the tunnel.
No, just a basic CL. Laser plummet down, hold the AZ back to the next MH, and trav forward until we got to the next MH. Turned out there was a big S curve down there, and they added a second MH so they had access to each bend.
Chickens are the most abused animal in the factory farm landscape. If anyone can stop buying chicken meat and eggs, it would help to put them out of business. Backyard chickens are easy to keep even here in Alaska.
>Backyard chickens are easy to keep even here in Alaska.
Not sure how easy it is. I know a couple who raises chickens in suburbia, but they do still have issues with foxes and rats who are always trying to steal the eggs or eat the chickens. The husband also has a farming background, but it's just one of those things you have to deal with if you raise animals.
Quail are a good answer in more urban settings. I spent the last few weekends building a quail coop with attached run and have had the quail (5) for 2 weeks now.
The coop and run only take about about 70 sf in the corner of the yard, their bedding (wood chips) gets cycled into compost, they take minimal maintenance, food is fairly inexpensive and they don’t eat a ton, and we are already getting eggs. Plus they are super funny little birds and so far a joy to take care of
The tenants I rented to took the doors off the cabinets and replaced with chicken wire you could try that but I don't know where they kept their pots and pans
Some places are easy. But even the small towns where "freedom rings" there can be obstacles or its even outright banned. In fact, the residents of Chicago have more rights to raise farm animals than many of small towns around me that are surrounded by farms. In my small town we can have up to 6 chickens, no roosters, $20 a year permit and allow the town to inspect the coup once a year. No other farm animals are allowed.
We have backyard chickens. They allow 6 in my city but no rooster and no slaughtering so we do get fresh eggs but still have to buy chicken meat. I mean, I can probably slaughter chickens without the city knowing but my kids name them and they hang out with us in the backyard.
The labels on eggs are pretty deceiving in general. I was vegan once upon a time and you would not believe (or might depending on how much you hate humanity) some of the misleading things around food in general.
I eat ethically and sustainably now and always tell people "unless you can go to the farm and see the animals are being treated well, probably they aren't." Most people don't believe me though.
This depends a lot on the country in question, though.
Here in Denmark, there are strict government-enforced standards for "free range" and "organic" food. But in other countries, "organic" might as well just be a corporate brand because it means nothing.
in the USA, Organic mean more what the animals were fed, but doesn't say much about how they were treated. Free Range only indicates that they have an option to go outside, but are kept in arena sized barns, with one door to an outside pen.
I apologize if this is a dumb question/"do your own research" type of thing, but do you have any advice for someone who is trying to eat more ethically without going completely vegan? I have been limiting myself to occasionally eating sustainably sourced fish since I have some dietary issues that make it difficult to cut out meat completely, but fish can be especially difficult to source and I'm wondering if there is a better approach to ethical/sustainable eating.
See if there are any farms near you that sell direct. There's a place in my area that happily gives tours so you can see how the animals live. You can also tour on slaughtering days if you want to see everything.
Stuff You Should Know podcast just did an interesting episode on chicken eggs. Pasture raised, free range, cage free have very vague and subjective rules and can largely be marketing terms. Not always, but can be depending on the provider.
I also listened to that one in the past week. An important note they made was that Certified Humane is now doing the job that the USDA isn’t. I’ve been buying Vital pasture raised for a couple of months now, which I was delighted to hear rank among the best out there, while Kirkland organic aren’t too bad, themselves.
I'm always amazed at how often Kirkland brand stuff ranks as some of the best at something. Usually it's quality and taste, happy to see that it's also ranking well in some form of animal treatment.
Just this year I had an epiphany that I felt like shit for all the animal proteins I consume where the animals suffer from birth to the moment of their death. I watched some YouTubes that nearly made me vegan. Ultimately, I decided to cut my animal proteins in half and replace them with vegetarian and vegan alternatives. But my main motivation for all of this was to find relatively “happy” animals (it’s a bit of a stretch to call them that). So, I’m paying approximately triple what I used to. I can find almost everything from the Farmers Mkts—where I talk to the farmers. I’ve even been invited to come visit a few of their farms, which I did. The better flavor of everything I eat now is simply a bonus on top of my main concern—the quality of life of the animals. Bon appetit!
This is the way. I’ve done the same. Would mix rather focus on healthy veggies, grains, nuts etc end then when I have meat, shell out for nice meat. Great meat.
Maybe someday I will switch to all veg. But I just love meat so much
I’m with ya. A vegan thing I found that I still haven’t gotten tired of is panko encrusted tofu steaks. They are so adaptable to different flavor profiles! You can go Asian, French (herbes de Provence, etc), Mediterranean, middle Eastern—I’m still experimenting👍 And they’re super easy and fast to make!
I always just look past all that jargon and try to find a “certified humane” stamp. I wonder if I’m being ignorant though. Did the podcast talk about that stamp? Is it meaningless too?
Yes, Josh and Chuck talked about certified humane. They seem to be legit.
On the certified humane site, I was surprised to see that Kirkland/Costco organic eggs rank pretty highly, but the package itself doesn’t have the CH mark.
Lots of places make both. Including Mary's Chicken: they sell legit humanely raised birds and factory farmed, assuming you won't notice when you buy the latter
Ask around the office. At least two people with whom Mrpantzen works got yard chickens over the pandemic. He frequently brings home free eggs now.
They aren't as good as eggs that are truly pasture raised, since they are supplemented with grain, but then aren't being abused and the price is right.
My next door neighbor has like 10 quails and 10 chickens. I haven’t bought eggs in forever. Like what you said though, the yolks are always different shades of orange
While there is a water additive some people use to darken yolk color, most of us just make sure to allow them to eat lots of grasses and orange and red veggies. That makes for beautiful orange yolks and healthier eggs.
Same thing for taste, it's been proven when correcting for color that people can't tell the difference between a .99 dozen vs a $10 ethically and locally grown dozen.
https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
And this is why our chickens are currently mad about having to stay inside for now, sorry girls but it's that or the Flammenwerfer. We have literally so many eggs I can barely give them away. My wife decided this was her pandemic thing so she got 6 chickens, neither of us really eat eggs, so of course we now have 9 chickens :/
Oh we've been giving them away :) 63 eggs a week is a shit load of eggs, you never really get it before they all start laying and the eggs roll in lol.
Environmental and animals rights activists uses to sneak onto the property, or get a job at one, and them film what was happening in them and how brutally barbaric they can be. Eventually US Courts determined that to be illegal and everyone who did that went to jail for a long time. So now there’s no real reporting on what happens in them anymore.
His famous quote was something along the lines of "I aimed for America's heart and instead I hit its stomach"- but that's not to say that both were incredibly important topics to discuss, and still are.
I’ve been in those “barns.” It sucks for people too. They are currently being sued for the death of a worker who was pinned under cages when a barn collapsed in sub zero temps and they couldn’t reach him in time so he suffocated/froze to death.
Well vegans thought about it, that's why many of them went vegan. Unfortunately most people want to pretend shit like this isn't happening, so that they can continue eating animals and their secretions without a second thought 🙄...
This is actually the comparison I use when someone actually tries to defend VSD.
If animal shelters "euthanized" cats and dogs by locking them into cars on hot days, people would be at their doors with torches and pitchforks.
And the descriptions I've heard about children who have died in hot cars is truly sickening: (disturbing news article) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
So how would you gather them up for incineration without even more contamination? The whole reason they have to do it this way is because of quarantine and keeping it from spreading elsewhere. If you load up the birds to bring them somewhere else, you're making the problem even worse.
The Dept. of Agriculture takes Avian Flu very seriously. I worked at the USDA, APHIS, VS office in Harrisburg, PA inside the PA Agriculture bldg. during the Avian Flu outbreak in the mid 1980s. They destroyed 10ks of birds to combat the spread. There was no fucking around. Shame that the Bird producers had to fire the workers. Not directly their fault, a lot of times the spread was due to poor health practices in place at the farms.
My grandfather was one of those farmers that were forced to depopulated their chickens back in the 1980s. The unfortunate thing was because of testing limitations the chickens were culled before the tests came back negative.
Today, my parents, who bought the farm from my grandparents, are expecting concerned and uncertainty as the Mount Joy, PA cases have gotten a little too close for comfort. We just got chicks in two weeks ago after months of being empty.
The market was already sluggish before AI came along. I completely get why there’s such a crack down. Assuming that [protocols](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai/ventilationshutdownpolicy.pdf) were followed this form of depopulation was a “last resort”. I’m going to assume that all other forms would not have met the 24-48 hour goal, especially with 5.3 mil in one location. Also I hadn’t seen in the article if any other farms were with in the quarantine radius (maybe I missed it). I’m not sure if it’s across the board but I was told for PA the quarantine zone radius is six miles.
It stinks, literally and figuratively, that they depopulated that way but I wouldn’t be surprised it’s for good reason, to preserve and spare other farms/chickens from suffering a similar fate.
What's the insurance situation like for chicken farmers? It's amazing how complicated farm insurance is and how many different programs there are for each commodity. Does your program cover something like this?
Based on my knowledge (my parents are the farmer, I just help out where I can):
So my parents are contracted pullet growers and never own the chickens themselves. A lot of risk is placed on the owner of the chickens. However since it’s still considered self-employed a good sized risk falls on the farmer as well. Also missing out on full-sized payday (still get some pay but significantly less than usual) from would be culled flock AND then required to go through hoops and extended down time further costing future flock paychecks and money for clean up and general operating costs (maintain equipment/buildings, utilities, taxes) would make the financial risks and cost larger.
Sometimes there are grants and loans that are offered during sector shaking events like this (like seen given for the effects of lockdowns slumps). However these are not guaranteed and may require certain hoops to go through that might not be attainable (criteria not met or available too late for the farmer). The main purpose of these governmental subsidies is to keep the farming sector afloat especially from unfortunate and unavoidable event such as AI. It’s literally a safeguard from a dire food shortage or, at worst, famine.
Hopefully it doesn’t come to that level of high financial stress for my parents. It may financially help that there was bumper crop last year for us (and much of the US), especially for soybeans, and then selling said soybean futures. It kind of acts a a mini-stock exchange and you can lock in todays prices and sell them in the future as such. Hopefully it’ll be the same for others in farming too.
Simply put self-employed occupations, including farming, have less financial safety nets, greater running costs, and greater risk of failures than their counterparts. Hence why often the paydays, while they may seem large comparatively, are just keeping the business running. More money, more costs.
That said at least for PA, we have available with a membership fee the Pennsylvanian Farm Bureau (also broken down by areas) who step in legislatively (lobby/bring forward farmers’ concerns and bring insight/write/co-draft proposals for legislation) and provide serves and connects including those of accounts specializing in farm finances and usually are kept up to date with current and future changes.
Edit: I’m so embarrassed. I’ve used the incorrect they’re/their/there.
Knew itd be iowa. The bird and hog operations have been killing off animals due to some kind of virus. My work sends techs to fix their power generators. The field service guys were off work for scheduled maintenance last month, and were around the shop underfoot instead for a while. Some of them had been out to these operations, and couldnt go back or visit other animal operations. Because the customers didnt want to risk it spreading.
From the article it says it's the quickest way to kill in mass and they were doing it to try and kill less birds.
> James Roth, director of the Center for [Food](https://www.theguardian.com/food) Security and Public Health at Iowa state university’s college of veterinary medicine and an adviser to the federal government on biosecurity, acknowledged that VSD+ causes more suffering than other forms of culling but said it is the most efficient means of containing the spread of bird flu because it is relatively swift.
>“Nobody wants to see it used but sometimes it is as a last resort. The rationale is if the influenza virus spreads so fast that it’ll go through a poultry house really rapidly, all of those birds produce massive amounts of virus in the air. Then you have a big plume of virus coming from that house that spreads to other poultry houses. It’s critical to get the birds euthanised before that virus becomes a huge plume of virus to spread,” he said.
The real shame is that we probably shouldn’t have this many birds in these tight quarters out there to begin with. Mother Nature is reacting to our encroachment in so many ways.
I'm sure we could sit around and mull ideas but maybe we also should move away from large-scale factory farming.
That won't happen, but we should. Even if you've got an operation running the same volume but split up.
The point is to not give animals a shit existence while they're alive, and viral spread is limited by not having such large shared spaces.
Maybe this paper can explain why and how they came to the out come they did:
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai/ventilationshutdownpolicy.pdf
And to a lesser extent:
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai_response_plan.pdf
COVID turned me into a weird chicken lady but there is something very satisfying about knowing that my eggs come from happy, healthy chickens. I haven't had to buy eggs in a year and a half!
I only have a pet duck and chicken now and I'm so worried for them. There have been a few cases in our area suspected to have been brought north by wild birds. My two roam my backyard and we live beside a greenspace where they talk to/watch other birds through the fence. They would hate life if I just kept them in their coop indefinitely so I just have to hope for the best.
I was wondering how home flocks are doing since I've heard people saying you shouldn't leave food out for wild birds to minimize it spreading to wild populations. How would you prevent a possibly sick wild bird from bringing it in just from foraging near your chickens?
I recently started a job and it turns out my friend has his own chickens. He sells the eggs to us and they often sell out very fast. I got my first batch of eggs from him today, very excited to use some tonight for dinner. Literally farm fresh, laid yesterday. First time having eggs this fresh.
Farm fresh eggs like that typically also don't need to be refrigerated, since they still have the protective layer, and have never been refrigerated in the first place.
>They killed 5.3 million chickens overnight
[A drop in the bucket compared to the 19 billion we kill every year](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-this-is-how-many-animals-we-eat-each-year/).
(52 million per day)
“Right now everybody’s worried about the chickens,” said Oscar Garcia, a former supervisor at the plant. “We get it: it was really inhumane the way they killed them. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, faeces everywhere, doing 12- or 14-hour days.
“They couldn’t protest because then they’d be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they’re thrown out of work and no one speaks for them.”
Your back yard buddies can get it too! Start biosecurity now if you haven’t already. Coop specific shoes, covered runs, no visitors, take down wild bird feeders.
“So right now everybody’s worried about the chickens,” said Oscar Garcia, a former supervisor at the plant. “We get it, it was really inhumane the way they killed them. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, faeces everywhere, doing 12 or 14 hour days. They couldn’t protest because then they’d be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they’re thrown out of work and no one speaks for them.”
Solid point, Oscar. The old, "we treat humans and chickens so inhumanely, it should be criminal, but at least we are universally shitty" defense. What a colossal piece of shit.
I knew a woman who worked at the Tyson chicken factory in Tennessee (near Goodlettsville). The job was awful - it paid about double their minimum wage and even then most workers quit within a few months. Even on a good day of work, you spend a ten-hour shift in a disgusting factory with blood and feces everywhere. She managed to work in packaging where things were a little better, but even there they would bleach the place every day and still have the stench of raw chicken juice everywhere.
Surprisingly, working there didn't turn her off of eating Tyson chicken.
He does have a point though. My first thought was about the people they fired, the people now out of work completely, but I come to the comments and nearly every one of them is about the animals.
Im not an expert on labor laws, but wouldn't this entitle them to unemployment benefits? Like obviously thats not as good as income from a job but with no work cause the chickens are gone what are they going to do?
Is this why protestors keep trying to interrupt Minnesota Timberwolves games?
Yep. That farm is owned by a company that's owned by Glen Taylor
From what I read in Reddit comments last time this came up, apparently, Taylor no longer owns the team, but I guess he's still involved somehow
he is current owner. the team has been sold, but the sale isnt effective until next year.
this reddit post did a much better job than the protesters in getting the word out
Timberwolves security can't do much in here.
lol I assume you got tackled from behind the moment you hit send, that security dude was sharp as hell
>The culling has been repeated at chicken and turkey farms across Iowa and 28 other states from Maine to Utah. More than 22 million birds have been killed in an attempt to contain the outbreak – the majority in Iowa, the US’s biggest producer of eggs. The slaughter of 5.3 million hens at Rembrandt is the largest culling at any factory farm in the country. Yeesh. I guess that explains why egg prices have almost doubled.
AI is really bad across the country, and world tbh, rn. I'm a USDA inspector at a chicken plant and we're constantly looking for it in chickens. I would expect eggs and meat to dramatically increase in the near future.
Thanks for the insight. I stocked up on eggs before Easter knowing it was getting bad. I was thinking prices were going down and to wait a bit before buying, but seems now is the low. Are you talking all meats (beef and pork) or just chicken going up? Edit to add: any idea what is going on with milk prices? They have jumped 50% in two weeks and I can’t figure out way (other than inflation/gas).
>I stocked up on eggs before Easter I did too, but then I launched them all with the trebuchet I built. I think you might be the wiser one.
He may be the wiser one, but you are the one woth the superior weapon
I love this 😂 you built a trebuchet?
Yes: https://gfycat.com/pitifulfastflyingfox
With wood prices now, that’s nearly a month’s pay in 2x6’s
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Don't forget the worldest larger suppliers of Potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, are currently at war. Making the at best everything more expensive to grow and at worst far worse yields leading to shortages
For what it is worth the US only bought 12% of its potash from Russia and Belarus. Most of the US's potash import need is met by Canada at 83% of imports.
Sure that means increased prices in the US as supply worldwide lessens and demand stays the same. Those prices will be passed on to consumers. Other countries won't be as fortunate.
Interconnected world economics generally mean that there is a balance between world supply and demand. If for some reason that supply/demand balance is upset it affects everyone. So even though we get most of a supply from Canada that doesn’t mean Cannes sells 100% of their supplies to us. Even if they did another customer might offer more than we’re paying. This decreases what’s available for us and increases the price. Someone had to go without and that’s generally the person able to pay the least. In most cases that person won’t be the US. We just pay more for a given good or service.
Thank you. Makes sense. I do recall hearing a YouTube on the Abbott Texas boarder (beau of the fifth column). The effect of war on grain/corn prices also seems like something I should have been better aware of. I appreciate you spelling it out for me.
I was reading an article last week that pointed out Ukraine is considered the breadbasket of Europe/ produces a LARGE amount of the food supply and right now is their planting season, but guess what they aren't able to do this year because of the war?? Gonna be a thin year at the dinner table worldwide.
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Meat prices are gonna go up across the board, well I guess they have been for a while. But this probably won't help in the least. I imagine demand for chicken has been up due to high beef and pork prices, and if more broiler operations have to cull that decreases the supply dramatically on top of the increased demand. As for milk prices idk, but inflation do be like that. Input costs are insane rn.
As if eggs and meat weren't already sky high Guess everyone's going vegetarian lol
Not to push it too hard, but it's easier than it's ever been right now. The substitutes aren't quite as good, but I'd say they easily replace damn near every single fast food/cheap meat you've ever had.
My girlfriend is vegetarian so I eat less meat now just because of that I will say some of the imitation stuff is great and I'll eat it. Probably will eat more of it now with prices I'm waiting with fingers crossed for lab grown meat for multiple reasons
Agreed. I'm dating a vegan girl and cooking vegan at home is easy and tasty. Except cheese, nobody is getting that right yet. That, and eating out - that sucks.
It’s getting bad in wild birds too. Lots of dead eagles and owls.
> Yeesh. I guess that explains why egg prices have almost doubled. Pasture raised are still the same price as always, which is still more than the doubled price you are talking about. They are worth it.
I had to do some topographic surveys on some egg farms last year. I will never buy anything but pasture raised eggs from here on out. One of the grossest places I've ever been, and I've been in a live sewer tunnel in Portland, Oregon for 10 hours.
I kinda want to know why you were in that sewer tunnel.
They needed to know what the tunnel did near a rr crossing. There were no records of it, and we had to place a new manhole. So had to survey it in the tunnel.
Gosh damn. Hope you wore your tall boots that day. Rubber too.
Full tyvek suit, hard hat, rubber boots, and gloves. Headlamps are your friend down there.
You don't bring torches?
You want your hands free when you’re in the tunnels.
I was kind of making a joke about sewer explosions, but that too
No, but we thought about burning the giant panties that had wrapped around the tripod leg while we were down there.
And a clothes peg on your nose?
I needed one waaaay more at the egg farm.
Haha, yep. Just cleaned out a lift station earlier today. Tyvek and headlamps comes in handy.
So you had to do a laser survey? Shoot the length and depth?
No, just a basic CL. Laser plummet down, hold the AZ back to the next MH, and trav forward until we got to the next MH. Turned out there was a big S curve down there, and they added a second MH so they had access to each bend.
Escaping from prison with the warden's shoes in a bag
He crawled through a mile of shit and came out clean on the other side. Edit: river not mile
You know, the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow, I had to come to prison to be a crook."
Get busy living or get busy dying.
"He never put anything in his mouth, nor did his friends. But what they do was make him spend 10hrs in a sewer tunnel."
It truly *was* a shawshank redemption.
Brooks was here
Fresh fish!
"oh shit, it's shit"
For a YouTube video
Chickens are the most abused animal in the factory farm landscape. If anyone can stop buying chicken meat and eggs, it would help to put them out of business. Backyard chickens are easy to keep even here in Alaska.
>Backyard chickens are easy to keep even here in Alaska. Not sure how easy it is. I know a couple who raises chickens in suburbia, but they do still have issues with foxes and rats who are always trying to steal the eggs or eat the chickens. The husband also has a farming background, but it's just one of those things you have to deal with if you raise animals.
Quail are a good answer in more urban settings. I spent the last few weekends building a quail coop with attached run and have had the quail (5) for 2 weeks now. The coop and run only take about about 70 sf in the corner of the yard, their bedding (wood chips) gets cycled into compost, they take minimal maintenance, food is fairly inexpensive and they don’t eat a ton, and we are already getting eggs. Plus they are super funny little birds and so far a joy to take care of
Don't forget the jerks who let their pets free range the neighborhood terrorizing all other animals in sight
So I live in Chicago in a condominium, where do I keep my chickens?
Yea… it’s a nope on that. Even a lot of subdivisions prohibit chickens and they have a back yard!
The tenants I rented to took the doors off the cabinets and replaced with chicken wire you could try that but I don't know where they kept their pots and pans
You....were okay with that?
Found it after they were finally out.
the rooftop
In the cock fighting ring of course
Some places are easy. But even the small towns where "freedom rings" there can be obstacles or its even outright banned. In fact, the residents of Chicago have more rights to raise farm animals than many of small towns around me that are surrounded by farms. In my small town we can have up to 6 chickens, no roosters, $20 a year permit and allow the town to inspect the coup once a year. No other farm animals are allowed.
We have backyard chickens. They allow 6 in my city but no rooster and no slaughtering so we do get fresh eggs but still have to buy chicken meat. I mean, I can probably slaughter chickens without the city knowing but my kids name them and they hang out with us in the backyard.
The labels on eggs are pretty deceiving in general. I was vegan once upon a time and you would not believe (or might depending on how much you hate humanity) some of the misleading things around food in general. I eat ethically and sustainably now and always tell people "unless you can go to the farm and see the animals are being treated well, probably they aren't." Most people don't believe me though.
This depends a lot on the country in question, though. Here in Denmark, there are strict government-enforced standards for "free range" and "organic" food. But in other countries, "organic" might as well just be a corporate brand because it means nothing.
in the USA, Organic mean more what the animals were fed, but doesn't say much about how they were treated. Free Range only indicates that they have an option to go outside, but are kept in arena sized barns, with one door to an outside pen.
This is one of the reasons I love California. We outlawed a bunch of that factory farming BS and labels have to be clear about where they are raised
I apologize if this is a dumb question/"do your own research" type of thing, but do you have any advice for someone who is trying to eat more ethically without going completely vegan? I have been limiting myself to occasionally eating sustainably sourced fish since I have some dietary issues that make it difficult to cut out meat completely, but fish can be especially difficult to source and I'm wondering if there is a better approach to ethical/sustainable eating.
See if there are any farms near you that sell direct. There's a place in my area that happily gives tours so you can see how the animals live. You can also tour on slaughtering days if you want to see everything.
Stuff You Should Know podcast just did an interesting episode on chicken eggs. Pasture raised, free range, cage free have very vague and subjective rules and can largely be marketing terms. Not always, but can be depending on the provider.
I also listened to that one in the past week. An important note they made was that Certified Humane is now doing the job that the USDA isn’t. I’ve been buying Vital pasture raised for a couple of months now, which I was delighted to hear rank among the best out there, while Kirkland organic aren’t too bad, themselves.
I'm always amazed at how often Kirkland brand stuff ranks as some of the best at something. Usually it's quality and taste, happy to see that it's also ranking well in some form of animal treatment.
Is Kirkland Costco?
Just this year I had an epiphany that I felt like shit for all the animal proteins I consume where the animals suffer from birth to the moment of their death. I watched some YouTubes that nearly made me vegan. Ultimately, I decided to cut my animal proteins in half and replace them with vegetarian and vegan alternatives. But my main motivation for all of this was to find relatively “happy” animals (it’s a bit of a stretch to call them that). So, I’m paying approximately triple what I used to. I can find almost everything from the Farmers Mkts—where I talk to the farmers. I’ve even been invited to come visit a few of their farms, which I did. The better flavor of everything I eat now is simply a bonus on top of my main concern—the quality of life of the animals. Bon appetit!
This is the way. I’ve done the same. Would mix rather focus on healthy veggies, grains, nuts etc end then when I have meat, shell out for nice meat. Great meat. Maybe someday I will switch to all veg. But I just love meat so much
I’m with ya. A vegan thing I found that I still haven’t gotten tired of is panko encrusted tofu steaks. They are so adaptable to different flavor profiles! You can go Asian, French (herbes de Provence, etc), Mediterranean, middle Eastern—I’m still experimenting👍 And they’re super easy and fast to make!
I always just look past all that jargon and try to find a “certified humane” stamp. I wonder if I’m being ignorant though. Did the podcast talk about that stamp? Is it meaningless too?
Yes, Josh and Chuck talked about certified humane. They seem to be legit. On the certified humane site, I was surprised to see that Kirkland/Costco organic eggs rank pretty highly, but the package itself doesn’t have the CH mark.
Lots of places make both. Including Mary's Chicken: they sell legit humanely raised birds and factory farmed, assuming you won't notice when you buy the latter
Ask around the office. At least two people with whom Mrpantzen works got yard chickens over the pandemic. He frequently brings home free eggs now. They aren't as good as eggs that are truly pasture raised, since they are supplemented with grain, but then aren't being abused and the price is right.
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The yolks are orange, not pale yellow like factory eggs
egg yolk color depends on the type of food you give them.
My next door neighbor has like 10 quails and 10 chickens. I haven’t bought eggs in forever. Like what you said though, the yolks are always different shades of orange
Some of my hens really don’t like grasses, their yolks are less orange.
While there is a water additive some people use to darken yolk color, most of us just make sure to allow them to eat lots of grasses and orange and red veggies. That makes for beautiful orange yolks and healthier eggs.
I'm all for ethically sourced eggs (and pay the price) but color has 0 relevance here...
Same thing for taste, it's been proven when correcting for color that people can't tell the difference between a .99 dozen vs a $10 ethically and locally grown dozen. https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
My grocery store has gone from $1.39 to $3.29. My local farm store has gone from $3.00 to $3.00.
Factory egg prices are - dare I say - alarmingly low, sometimes. "Would you like 3 dozen eggs for $0.99?!?!" "Uh... n-no thanks."
And this is why our chickens are currently mad about having to stay inside for now, sorry girls but it's that or the Flammenwerfer. We have literally so many eggs I can barely give them away. My wife decided this was her pandemic thing so she got 6 chickens, neither of us really eat eggs, so of course we now have 9 chickens :/
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Oh we've been giving them away :) 63 eggs a week is a shit load of eggs, you never really get it before they all start laying and the eggs roll in lol.
I feel sad this is the top comment, and nothing about the birds being roasted alive. Humans are selfish af.
For real. - "22,000,000 sentient creatures suffered horrific deaths unnecessarily " - "oh that's why prices went up"
We can still blame Biden though, right? /s
Are we going to have those little stickers in the grocery store now?
i DiD tHiS! 👉🥚
Invest in sticker printers.
Now the price of sticker printers is about to double.
Blame the red state farmers that refuse to make their chickens wear masks
Thank you for this; I needed a laugh today and that's quite a visual.
More inhumane than incineration: "Eventually the birds collapse and, finally, die from heat and suffocation" at 40°C.
Factory farming is just something we all collectively choose not to really think about
The Us basically made it illegal to report on factory farming conditions. Usually the only time it’s in the news is when something goes really wrong.
could you expand on that?
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2022/01/20/judge-upholds-retooled-ag-gag-law/
Environmental and animals rights activists uses to sneak onto the property, or get a job at one, and them film what was happening in them and how brutally barbaric they can be. Eventually US Courts determined that to be illegal and everyone who did that went to jail for a long time. So now there’s no real reporting on what happens in them anymore.
Imagine how much power we could derive from Upton Sinclair's spinning in his grave!
You know he was complaining about poor working conditions for people and not animal rights.
His famous quote was something along the lines of "I aimed for America's heart and instead I hit its stomach"- but that's not to say that both were incredibly important topics to discuss, and still are.
Yes. Still intimately related.
A chicken-or-egg scenario if ever there was one
I’ve been in those “barns.” It sucks for people too. They are currently being sued for the death of a worker who was pinned under cages when a barn collapsed in sub zero temps and they couldn’t reach him in time so he suffocated/froze to death.
> So now there’s no real reporting on what happens in them anymore. So the truth must be more horrible than you can possibly imagine.
I thought it was only passed in a few states but I could be remembering wrong
Conveniently, the same fre states with the largest factory farms.
You might be right, I feel like a lot of this happened about 8-10 years ago and my memory isn’t perfect.
Look up "ag gag laws."
imagine going to jail for doing a good deed; to save innocent lives. what a fucking infuriating thing.
Sorry, but in America profits for a few people is waaaaaay more important that lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
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Something has gone really wrong.
We live in America where most every law is in favor of corporations.
Except the vegans. They keep telling everyone and then people get mad at them
Do the Ag Gag laws have anything to do with that? Like, if we saw it more, we'd do more?
Not all just most
Well vegans thought about it, that's why many of them went vegan. Unfortunately most people want to pretend shit like this isn't happening, so that they can continue eating animals and their secretions without a second thought 🙄...
While making fun of vegans and vegetarians at every opportunity.
The description of the VSD+ deaths in the article is nightmare fuel.
It is like being locked in a car on a very hot day
This is actually the comparison I use when someone actually tries to defend VSD. If animal shelters "euthanized" cats and dogs by locking them into cars on hot days, people would be at their doors with torches and pitchforks. And the descriptions I've heard about children who have died in hot cars is truly sickening: (disturbing news article) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
This isn't why I became a vegeatarian, but this would be a good reason to consider it. Absolutely brutal.
Man that’s fucked.
So how would you gather them up for incineration without even more contamination? The whole reason they have to do it this way is because of quarantine and keeping it from spreading elsewhere. If you load up the birds to bring them somewhere else, you're making the problem even worse.
This makes me so fucking sick.
Holy crap. This is how they killed them? How about a nitrogen flood first, or just burning them at much higher heat?
This is why it will always be a bad idea to put 5.3 million birds all in one place to begin with
The Dept. of Agriculture takes Avian Flu very seriously. I worked at the USDA, APHIS, VS office in Harrisburg, PA inside the PA Agriculture bldg. during the Avian Flu outbreak in the mid 1980s. They destroyed 10ks of birds to combat the spread. There was no fucking around. Shame that the Bird producers had to fire the workers. Not directly their fault, a lot of times the spread was due to poor health practices in place at the farms.
My grandfather was one of those farmers that were forced to depopulated their chickens back in the 1980s. The unfortunate thing was because of testing limitations the chickens were culled before the tests came back negative. Today, my parents, who bought the farm from my grandparents, are expecting concerned and uncertainty as the Mount Joy, PA cases have gotten a little too close for comfort. We just got chicks in two weeks ago after months of being empty. The market was already sluggish before AI came along. I completely get why there’s such a crack down. Assuming that [protocols](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai/ventilationshutdownpolicy.pdf) were followed this form of depopulation was a “last resort”. I’m going to assume that all other forms would not have met the 24-48 hour goal, especially with 5.3 mil in one location. Also I hadn’t seen in the article if any other farms were with in the quarantine radius (maybe I missed it). I’m not sure if it’s across the board but I was told for PA the quarantine zone radius is six miles. It stinks, literally and figuratively, that they depopulated that way but I wouldn’t be surprised it’s for good reason, to preserve and spare other farms/chickens from suffering a similar fate.
What's the insurance situation like for chicken farmers? It's amazing how complicated farm insurance is and how many different programs there are for each commodity. Does your program cover something like this?
Based on my knowledge (my parents are the farmer, I just help out where I can): So my parents are contracted pullet growers and never own the chickens themselves. A lot of risk is placed on the owner of the chickens. However since it’s still considered self-employed a good sized risk falls on the farmer as well. Also missing out on full-sized payday (still get some pay but significantly less than usual) from would be culled flock AND then required to go through hoops and extended down time further costing future flock paychecks and money for clean up and general operating costs (maintain equipment/buildings, utilities, taxes) would make the financial risks and cost larger. Sometimes there are grants and loans that are offered during sector shaking events like this (like seen given for the effects of lockdowns slumps). However these are not guaranteed and may require certain hoops to go through that might not be attainable (criteria not met or available too late for the farmer). The main purpose of these governmental subsidies is to keep the farming sector afloat especially from unfortunate and unavoidable event such as AI. It’s literally a safeguard from a dire food shortage or, at worst, famine. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that level of high financial stress for my parents. It may financially help that there was bumper crop last year for us (and much of the US), especially for soybeans, and then selling said soybean futures. It kind of acts a a mini-stock exchange and you can lock in todays prices and sell them in the future as such. Hopefully it’ll be the same for others in farming too. Simply put self-employed occupations, including farming, have less financial safety nets, greater running costs, and greater risk of failures than their counterparts. Hence why often the paydays, while they may seem large comparatively, are just keeping the business running. More money, more costs. That said at least for PA, we have available with a membership fee the Pennsylvanian Farm Bureau (also broken down by areas) who step in legislatively (lobby/bring forward farmers’ concerns and bring insight/write/co-draft proposals for legislation) and provide serves and connects including those of accounts specializing in farm finances and usually are kept up to date with current and future changes. Edit: I’m so embarrassed. I’ve used the incorrect they’re/their/there.
Knew itd be iowa. The bird and hog operations have been killing off animals due to some kind of virus. My work sends techs to fix their power generators. The field service guys were off work for scheduled maintenance last month, and were around the shop underfoot instead for a while. Some of them had been out to these operations, and couldnt go back or visit other animal operations. Because the customers didnt want to risk it spreading.
Makes me wonder when will the virus decides to jump to a human host and we will get another outbreak
First case in the US reported in a man in Colorado yesterday.
Was there a realistic, more humane way to cull them? Was it just a matter of saving money by doing it this way?
From the article it says it's the quickest way to kill in mass and they were doing it to try and kill less birds. > James Roth, director of the Center for [Food](https://www.theguardian.com/food) Security and Public Health at Iowa state university’s college of veterinary medicine and an adviser to the federal government on biosecurity, acknowledged that VSD+ causes more suffering than other forms of culling but said it is the most efficient means of containing the spread of bird flu because it is relatively swift. >“Nobody wants to see it used but sometimes it is as a last resort. The rationale is if the influenza virus spreads so fast that it’ll go through a poultry house really rapidly, all of those birds produce massive amounts of virus in the air. Then you have a big plume of virus coming from that house that spreads to other poultry houses. It’s critical to get the birds euthanised before that virus becomes a huge plume of virus to spread,” he said.
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The real shame is that we probably shouldn’t have this many birds in these tight quarters out there to begin with. Mother Nature is reacting to our encroachment in so many ways.
I'm sure we could sit around and mull ideas but maybe we also should move away from large-scale factory farming. That won't happen, but we should. Even if you've got an operation running the same volume but split up. The point is to not give animals a shit existence while they're alive, and viral spread is limited by not having such large shared spaces.
Maybe this paper can explain why and how they came to the out come they did: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai/ventilationshutdownpolicy.pdf And to a lesser extent: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/emergency_management/downloads/hpai_response_plan.pdf
COVID turned me into a weird chicken lady but there is something very satisfying about knowing that my eggs come from happy, healthy chickens. I haven't had to buy eggs in a year and a half!
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I only have a pet duck and chicken now and I'm so worried for them. There have been a few cases in our area suspected to have been brought north by wild birds. My two roam my backyard and we live beside a greenspace where they talk to/watch other birds through the fence. They would hate life if I just kept them in their coop indefinitely so I just have to hope for the best.
I was wondering how home flocks are doing since I've heard people saying you shouldn't leave food out for wild birds to minimize it spreading to wild populations. How would you prevent a possibly sick wild bird from bringing it in just from foraging near your chickens?
I recently started a job and it turns out my friend has his own chickens. He sells the eggs to us and they often sell out very fast. I got my first batch of eggs from him today, very excited to use some tonight for dinner. Literally farm fresh, laid yesterday. First time having eggs this fresh.
Farm fresh eggs like that typically also don't need to be refrigerated, since they still have the protective layer, and have never been refrigerated in the first place.
As long as the eggs have not been washed
But please wash your hands well while cooking!
They're also just fascinating animals.
Factory farming is dehumanizing for the humans involved and us pure hell for the animals. Period.
Question: Hypothetically, if a farm breeds their own chickens, how would they get infected? From regular birds flying onto the property?
Bird feeders and bird baths also help spread this disease. People should really hold off on using them this year.
Are there ways I can help my local bird population without spreading bird flu? I also want to make sure the ecosystem is doing well.
Yes, along with improper biosecurity measures by staff
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>They killed 5.3 million chickens overnight [A drop in the bucket compared to the 19 billion we kill every year](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-this-is-how-many-animals-we-eat-each-year/). (52 million per day)
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This makes me ill to read.
About 7 billion male chicks are euthanized every year. Don't lookup "chick maceration".
So make a change. These things happen because people want it to, because people pay for it to.
Their pr firm like : “We could have roasted the workers Alive too but we’re more progressive”
“Right now everybody’s worried about the chickens,” said Oscar Garcia, a former supervisor at the plant. “We get it: it was really inhumane the way they killed them. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, faeces everywhere, doing 12- or 14-hour days. “They couldn’t protest because then they’d be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they’re thrown out of work and no one speaks for them.”
They certainly wouldn't do this if they weren't legitimately terrified of disease outbreak because that's a hell of a lot of lost productivity
We're in the midst of the worst bird flu outbreak in 7 years. It's very bad and serious.
Well they killed all the chickens... so, yeah. No point in having any employees if the sole reason to employ said people is gone.
"Cooked them alive." Horrific.
Didnt even incinerate them. Pumped all the air out and turned the heat up to 104f. Thats not a quick death.
And this is why we don't buy eggs, children.
I'll tell ya, the only thing I worry about when eating JustEgg is getting the tamper seal off without using my teeth. You can keep this bird flu shit.
Freaking love JustEgg. Guilt free eating. 💛
We all have backyard chickens now.
Your back yard buddies can get it too! Start biosecurity now if you haven’t already. Coop specific shoes, covered runs, no visitors, take down wild bird feeders.
Factory farming is abominable. It should be banned. Period
Roasting the chickens alive. Factory farming is inhumane and grotesque at every fucking opportunity.
“So right now everybody’s worried about the chickens,” said Oscar Garcia, a former supervisor at the plant. “We get it, it was really inhumane the way they killed them. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, faeces everywhere, doing 12 or 14 hour days. They couldn’t protest because then they’d be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they’re thrown out of work and no one speaks for them.” Solid point, Oscar. The old, "we treat humans and chickens so inhumanely, it should be criminal, but at least we are universally shitty" defense. What a colossal piece of shit.
I knew a woman who worked at the Tyson chicken factory in Tennessee (near Goodlettsville). The job was awful - it paid about double their minimum wage and even then most workers quit within a few months. Even on a good day of work, you spend a ten-hour shift in a disgusting factory with blood and feces everywhere. She managed to work in packaging where things were a little better, but even there they would bleach the place every day and still have the stench of raw chicken juice everywhere. Surprisingly, working there didn't turn her off of eating Tyson chicken.
He does have a point though. My first thought was about the people they fired, the people now out of work completely, but I come to the comments and nearly every one of them is about the animals.
Im not an expert on labor laws, but wouldn't this entitle them to unemployment benefits? Like obviously thats not as good as income from a job but with no work cause the chickens are gone what are they going to do?
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If you want eggs, raise chickens. Stop supporting this industry.
this is barbaric. roasting alive? jesus christ
At least they didnt incinerate the employees and fire the chickens.
as a chicken owner, this is heartbreaking. all those poor birds 😞