Food project proposes Matrix-style vertical chicken farms

[Alatar]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... en-farming

Warning: not for the faint of heart.

In some ways this feels like an Onion article, or one of those reductio ad absurdum pieces. And yet, part of me wonders why this bothers me so much. Is a mindless chicken more offensive than a suffering one?

[JewelSong]

I think...no.

Just no.

Although I have no doubt that this will be done, people will eat the product and it may become a "normal" (and cheaper) way of obtaining "fresh meat."

The dollar is always going to be the bottom line, IMHO.

[Dave_LF]

This is the key quote:

"The realities of the existing systems of production are just as shocking," he told Wired.co.uk, "but they are hidden behind the sentimental guise of traditional farming scenes that we as consumers hold in our minds and see on our food packaging."

[vison]

This is the key quote:

"The realities of the existing systems of production are just as shocking," he told Wired.co.uk, "but they are hidden behind the sentimental guise of traditional farming scenes that we as consumers hold in our minds and see on our food packaging."

You betcha. That's it in a nutshell, right there.

People have NO idea. None.

But the other thing is, most of them wouldn't care anyway.

[Dave_LF]

The aritcle glosses over the matter of how the cerebral cortex would be removed, which seems like a rather key point. Also, this whole idea comes from a student of architecture. Except as a philosophical exercise, I'm not sure how seriously the whole thing needs to be taken.

[SirDennis]

Another bad idea... factory farming is working so well already, why mess with it? This hit the news since your thread went up:

TORONTO - Chicken meat may be a source of E. coli bacteria that is making its way into people and causing infections, a new study suggests.

The study compared strains of E. coli bacteria in poultry and other meats to the strains found to have been causing urinary tract infections in women in Montreal from June 2005 to May 2007.

http://www.globalnews.ca/sports/health/ ... story.html

Read it on Global News: Global News | E. coli from chicken may be causing human infections, study suggests

I'm not sure they are worried about perceived suffering, rather better use of space. Presently chicken meat farming is done in very long low buildings. It's all about reducing footprints now a days...

I wonder if this brave new scheme involves feeding them their own waste and/or liquefied carcasses as well?

[Maria]

The person who proposed this ought to read about Mike the Headless Chicken.

I think if you leave enough of the brain stem alive to keep the bird alive, you are going to have an animal that still wants to move around and do normal chicken things. The story about Mike the Headless Chicken says that he still tried to sleep with his "head" under a wing, and still tried to peck for food and preen his feathers.

I've read that in rat studies, if you want to stress the animal, you immobilize it for a set period of time. Immobilizing a chicken with much of it's brain dead would probably still stress it a lot.

I doubt you'd gain anything and probably lose points on the animal cruelty meter. Plus the whole set up is probably prohibitively expensive. An animal that feeds itself is probably cheaper to raise than a whole lot of mechanized alternatives.

Even vat grown meat *link* is considered too expensive to produce commercially yet. I doubt that growing a whole bird on life support would be very cheap, either.

[Impenitent]

I can't engage with this idea at all. Appalled.

[Griffon64]

As vison mentions, our food supply system is already appalling. People chose to ignore it because it is convenient for them to have it that way.