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According to a new report on Wired UK, Architecture student André Ford has proposed a new system for the mass production of headless chickens (birds whose cerebral cortex has been removed), so that they can be produced in more densely packed conditions, without the associated distress.
Ford speculates that the system will help meet the rising demand for meat, particularly poultry, and improve the welfare of chickens! He envisions that the “desensitized” chickens could then be stacked in dozens of vertical frames in urban farms (yes, picture the human pods in The Matrix).
The horror doesn’t stop there… in order to tackle the lack of muscular stimulation in such an environment, he proposes using electric shocks on the chickens!
Ford claims the solution is no more shocking than existing food-production techniques. “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.”
Well, at least he got something right!
If you’re interested, you can view the spooky prototypes of Ford’s concept in in his “Unconscious Farming” Image Gallery.
Is this nightmare the “humane” and “sustainable” dream of animal agriculture that everyone keeps talking about? Do you think this will ever happen?
Chicken Image Source: Stewart Black/Flickr
This is revolting!
EdI really have no way of woiknng what the Humane Society or PETA wants to eliminate meat consumption altogether PETA certainly acts like it does while the Humane Society seems content to focus on aspects of the industry that use techniques that seem to be difficult to justify (gavage, cages etc). Since it is not at all clear to me that any of these techniques are morally worse than taking the life of an animal to make glue, for example, it’s not obvious to me why the Humane Society would make so much noise about them unless they were using them as baby-steps towards taking down the whole industry. But really I don’t know.In any case, I think it’s fine for individuals and organizations to take the principled position that meat consumption is wrong for whatever reasons. People should be free to believe whatever they choose to believe. Really what worries me about PETA and other “activist” organizations that feel they should “legislate” eating choices (and meat eating is a choice”) is the same thing that worries me about the Islamists, the communists, the fundamentalist Christian activists and the NRA, far-right-wingers and far-left-wingers etc. I worry that they are fanatics -and if I know anything about history I know this: when fanatics take power, the rest of us pay the price. I’m an very cool with veganism, what I don’t like at all is militant and legislative veganism.