Episode 77 Black Chick and Good Feelings
Black Chick, colour changing feathers, comets, fireworks and "all of the lights", Meatfree McCartney, ABC="Factory Farming", 2012 Surf to City Funrun, Team Vegan, the Happiest of Meats, Pretty Lights, Avicii, Flo Rida, Etta James, Tupac and Bruce Hornsby, Veganism and Black Presidents: "Thats Just The Way It Is"
Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals iTunes link
Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.
I've been so busy with other endeavors, I've fallen behind on the show. I currently have two other interview episodes recorded, waiting to be produced, an interview with a PRO animal experimentation advocate, as in, someone who starts groups that march with banners ENCOURAGING animal experimentation, and another interview with my friend Marty, of Martys Flying Vegan Review .com, a pilot who visits as many Vegan restaurants as possible, and shares his wonderful adventures with all his loyal readers, myself included.
Recently I saw a stock truck, a large two trailer unit, the size of say, two buses joined together, which usually carry sheep to slaughter, quite possibly bulls and cows too. Just as upsettingly, I saw a very small truck, labelled "ABC Foods".
A truck from ABC foods, the same exact "factory egg farm", with "battery cages" where my Rescued Hen friends were saved from, legally by my friends who get them when they are due to be killed, they ask the farmer for Hens. ABC Foods is an innocent sounding name, when its whats labelled "factory farming" of female birds.. The sides of the truck have this whimsically "cute" looking mother hen, gazing down with big dumb eyes at her chicks, who are looking up at her….the image of a "chook". I really do hate that word, "chook", its mostly an Australian term used for a Hen, but it has sort of "silly" connotations, you might use it to be "oh stop being a silly choke", or that if your children are sick, home from school, "I've got a couple of sick chooks to look after". I think of the term "chook" as being like "mongrel", like how it used to be fairly common for dogs to be called "mutts", and cats were "moggies", its not a dignified sounding term, like I think Hen and Rooster are, Chickens has no such baggage. I would never call my Hen Friends "chooks".
Think about the image on the side of the ABC truck, a Hen sitting on a straw nest, with chicks, her babies, her children, she is their mother. Of course this could NEVER happen at the farm, the Hens will never see a Rooster, the baby roosters are killed as soon as possible at the breeding facilities, since they will never have a female cycle, to pass eggs through their bottoms, they are KILLED, so the Hens will never have their eggs fertilized by a male Chicken, a Rooster, they will live as lonely spinsters trapped in wire mesh cages, no straw in sight, no sex, no reproduction, no children, no whimsical cartoon of motherhood, like depicted on the "factory farm"'s trucks. Its blatantly false advertising, if nothing else, that we can feel good about the company, "awww, cute mother hens!". And how often do we think about what REALLY goes into the Non Vegan foods we buy? That we may be continually "shocked!" by the "amazing new footage of animal welfare cruelty on tv!", we may actually smile at the logo on the farms trucks, dropping off cardboard trays of eggs all over the city, but we wont put the two together, that the products we buy *are* from those places where other animals are seen as things, be it on "factory farms", or "free range farms". The idea that someone could watch "shocking expose footage" on television, aimed at changing an Animal Welfare law, and then smiling as they go to the supermarket and buy "barn raised" eggs, with a silly looking cartoon of a proud mother sitting on a straw nest with no doubt peeping chicks underneath her is ridiculous, these eggs could well be from the same exact "farm" shown on television.
Social Conditioning, where we "just know" that Hens equal eggs which equal chicks, we know where their babies come from, from inside the eggs (we often seem to be a little less clear that a male Rooster is involved, the Hen gets all the credit for Chicken Parenting), and we are still ok with EATING those eggs, the effective wombs for unfertilized eggs inside, the potential children of a female bird, kept in a cage, never to see daylight, much less Pina Coladas, a romantic walk on the beach, even in the rain, flowers and a phone call in the morning.
I don't want to sound negative for this episode though, complaining bitterly about logos on the sides of trucks and the word "chook" wont help anyone!
Recently, I ran in the 2012 Surf to City funrun, from Oreti Beach to Queens Park, in the middle of Invercargill. Its 12km in length, and to be fair, I jogged the first four kilometres or so, then alternated jogging with "power walking", I wasn't setting any world records :-)
