I had intended to write something about my first major vegan shopping trip, my excitement about some new recipes, and maybe even my intense drive to get a copy of "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Instead, I find the need to write about the number 50 billion.
50 billion. This is a huge number. If you really think about, this number is unfathomably large. It is 7.4 times the current human population of Earth. It also happens to be how many chickens are globally raised annually. 50 billion beings who spend 39 days inside a concrete prison covered in filth and suffering from innumerable diseases and afflictions. Your gut instinct may be to write them off as nuggets or beady-eyed nothings, but current research shows that birds are remarkably intelligent and social creatures. They think. They feel. Just sit with that. Now, imagine 50 billion again.
I hope that my choice for myself and my family can in some way bring that number down, even by 1.
Perhaps tomorrow I will write about 500 million, which is the number of pigs who live the same sad life as those 50 billion chickens.
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Yeah! I'm excited about your new adventure in cyber land! I promise I will faithfully read with an open mind. What happens if we don't eat the 50 billion chickens? Can we possibly sterilize them so they don't reproduce? I love your veganism (even if i am not) and support you, but I don't support a world that stinks like chicken shit. -AnneC
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your open mindedness! In fact, most factory farmed animals are already sterile due to being genetically modified to produce more in a shorter amount of time. The turkeys currently raised in the US are all completely sterile as their massive body size has made them unable to mount and mate. Chickens can still reproduce, though they would not survive long as they are essentially genetic mutants (their life span in factory farm settings is 39-44 days). What would ideally happen would be less demand= less supply. It simply is not feasible to release 50 billion genetic mutant birds into the wild. The producers of poultry make what we demand, and sadly we demand 50 billion a year. If we demanded less, they would breed and produce less. In the meantime, the conditions these birds live in needs to be vastly improved.
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