Comment 73107

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted January 17, 2012 at 00:30:18

I may be vegan, but this rule seems a little bizzare. If nothing else because of the greatly exaggerated disease, pest and waste problems which come from centralizing chicken "production" into colossal hundred-thousand-bird warehouses. For those who aren't convinced though, here's what chickens can do for you, even if you don't eat them.

  • Fertilizing - through nitrogen-rich manure and mineral-rich eggshells
  • Organic Waste Disposal - Chickens are walking compost heaps, able to scratch, eat and pick through kitchen scraps and other green waste to greatly accellerate the process.
  • Pest reduction - Chickens eat bugs, like most small fowl (ducks, geese etc) are great predators for garden pests.
  • No-dig tillage - Many organic operations use "chicken tracktors" (small coops on wheels) to prepare ground for planting because of how effectively they scour and enrich ground with none of the soil-depleting, energy-hogging and carbon-releasing drawbacks of plowing.
  • Genetics - factory-farmed chicken are specially bred to be grown in factories, not to be tasty, nutritious or friendly. I've known a lot of farmers, and other breeds are renowned for everything from amazing eggs to their amazing pet-like friendliness.
  • Labour - Do you know any "chicken catchers"? Ask them what their job entails...
  • Food Security - what do you plan to do if supermarket trucks ever stop delivering for more than a week? In such situations, hungry neighbours are not friendly neighbours...
  • Poverty - What about people who can't afford to buy eggs, and don't have the space for an expansive bean and seed garden?
  • Freedom - the burden of proof should be placed on those who wish to prohibit something, not those who simply want to be allowed to do it.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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