Factory
Farming
Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operations
and the Poultry Industry
http://www.factoryfarming.com/gallery/broiler01.htm
About
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
& the Poultry Industry
By 1965 one person could
operate a plant producing forty thousand
birds a day. Factory farming on this
scale is known as CAFO which
stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operations.
All CAFO's create massive amounts of
manure which has to be removed.
Poultry manure is traditionally a valuable
and important fertilizer.
The chicken manure has always been recycled
by spreading it on the land.
However, CAFO's produce so much waste
that the land cannot
absorb it and the excess is contaminating
ground water, rivers and lakes.
The nitrogen rich waste
causes excess algae buildup in nearby
waterways.
Lakes and streams are deprived of oxygen,
killing plants, fish and other organisms.
Corporate poultry processors like Tysons
and Cargill escape blame for this
environmental pollution, by claiming
it's the responsibility of the farmers
who
supply their factories.
Read
a summary of the problem with Ohio,
USA's Buckeye Egg Farm.
Poultry
production in West Virginia's Potomac
Valley has tripled in the last decade.
The area produces nearly 90 million
chickens a year. But is poultry pollution
threatening the growing state tourism
industry? Is it responsible for a national
environmental group's charge that the
Potomac River is one of the 10 most
endangered rivers in North America?
What is being done about the problem,
and who is paying the bill? Find out
in this special series.
Processing
Then |
Now |
All parts of the chicken
abattoirs are, of course, automated.
In the Perdue plant the chickens are
taken from the trucks at six-thirty
in the morning at Accomac, Virginia,
and hung upside down by their feet on
a conveyor belt. The belt then moves
through an electrically charged solution,
which, in Christian Adam's words ("Frank
Perdue Is Chicken," Esquire Magazine,
April,, 1973), "shocks almost all
of them senseless. From there they move
to the Kill Room where a knife-like
instrument cuts their throats; then
down the 'bleed tunnel' where their
blood drains away into a vat of hot
water which loosens the feather sockets
and then past rubber finger-like pluckers
which remove most of the feathers and
through a flame that singes off the
fine fuzz." Next in the processing,
the head and feet are removed. In the
Eviscerating Room, the birds are gutted
by machines and inspected and graded
by government inspectors. Finally, they
are chilled, weighed and packaged. Nothing
is wasted. In that respect, at least,
the Puritan Ethnic is still observed.
Those parts considered inedible by humans
are made into pet food, or, as in the
case of legs, considered a delicacy
in the Orient, exported. Even the feathers
are processed and made into a component
of chicken feed.
---Page Smith, The Chicken Book,
Little Brown & Co., Boston,1975.
http://www.vegetarismus.ch/bilder/img/chicken_b_022.jpg
Links
A
Citizen's Guide to Concentrated Animal
Feeding Operations
Factory
Farming.Com: the truth hurts
Let
us know what you think of the issue
of CAFO's.
Join
our Food Museum Blog discussion on this
topic
or
Contact
us
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