Won't someone think of the chickens? (a bird flu post)

I like chicken, whatever way it is prepared. Over today's lunch (stewed chicken over rice and beans, my third favorite meal), I figured that I probably eat from 1.5 to 2 chickens each week. I'm guessing that, on average, people in the U.S. probably eat at least one chicken each week (since I'm sure that few people like chicken as much as I do). So, a typical person in the U.S. would consume about 52 chickens each year. I think it's fair to say that there are about 250,000 chicken-eaters in the U.S., allowing for vegetarians, vegans, and small children who don't consume much food. That comes to a total of about 1.3 billion chickens consumed in the U.S. every year. That's a lot of chickens.

Considering the cramped conditions in which commercial chickens are grown, and the rate at which birds can become infected, I think it's obvious that if one chicken in a factory becomes ill with bird flu, the entire stock would probably be lost. If this occurs in a number of factories, the availability of chicken will drop and prices for chickens and their parts will soar. People all over the country will have to do without chicken. Such a serious disruption of the chicken supply could send the U.S. economy, which has already been weakened, into a tailspin.

So limiting the spread of bird flu really is a serious matter.

Next topic for consideration: do chickens have souls? If they do, we're going to have a lot to answer for.

As in, vaccinate all the chickens, so they don't contract the flu. To me, it seems like a good application of an actual H5N1 vaccine, since a human mutation may or may not respond to that vaccine anyway.

I've cheerfully eaten many, many chickens in my day. And they were contract-killings, too. I didn't even exercise the moral courage of killing them with my own hands.

They call to you in the morning asking to be let out to dig in the compost pile. They follow you through the garden and will even ask for a drink of water when they are thirsty.

I had beautiful birds and all had different and unique personalities.

Unfortunately, the hawks got them one by one. Nature took its course.

that one of his chickens has avian flu, the whole flock will be killed. If the manufacturer chooses to hide the fact, then much of his flock will die and it's possible that the flu could be passed on to a number of people in it's current form. Every time it's passed on to a human, there is a possibility that the virus will make its critical mutation to be able to easily pass from human to human.

It's likely that we will all be affected by this bird flu thing, even if it doesn't become a pandemic.

but rather why humans who believe they have souls continue to behave in such a soulless manner in regards to other species. Our conduct toward other species should be based on our soul, not whether we believe other species have a soul.

We are a truly despicable species, capable of anything & willing to justify our heinous behavior.



Nothing but the ramblings of a misanthrope, here.

Thank you for posting it!

and I can opine with some certainty that they do not have souls.

They will eat their own young, peck each other to death, the roosters routinely gang-rape the hens and fight each other to the death.

Now, I realize humans do these things also, but I don't believe in heaven or hell for us either.