Feeding the world would become a big problem if one were to listen to the polemics, provocations, and irrational demands of the anti-farming activist organisations that, despite being a small number compared to the world’s population as a whole, spread fabricated information so suggestively as to appear credible.
The problem, however, is not the activists, who should be ignored, but those who believe their statements without investigating and verifying. However, even those who believe without verifying are not entirely to blame, because there is a lack of sources in the sector from which to draw reassuring and yet accurate, transparent, real information. This is a rather strange situation, especially since it has lasted for many years during which activists have been very busy denigrating the farm system by painting it as hell.
We at MAC are not farmers and this puts us on the same level of authority as anti-farming activists. However, we are communication professionals committed to producing content in which ethics plays a leading role. And to do this we follow and inform ourselves without prejudice about the ‘professional poultry sector’: this allows us to be reliable with respect to those who are unable to separate emotions from scientific and practical issues.
This is why M.A.C. was born. Where activists produce artfully edited articles and documentaries, with material lacking scientific reliability and with questionable professional methods, we verify the orientation of the poultry sector’s activities, observing, surveying and recording attentions of the sector that the anti-farming organisations choose to ignore or even instrumentalise.
So, whenever activists raise an aspect of the poultry sector that is a problem for them, we at MAC engage in an in-depth examination of that aspect and examine the choices made by the sector on that issue, while maintaining the understanding that the sector acts to feed the planet through the farming and care of animals, through which it provides quality, accessible and affordable food around the world.
It is no coincidence that poultry has become the main source of meat and that its contribution to human nutrition is increasing. Indeed, humans worldwide are increasingly choosing to eat chicken meat.
“Poultry is the most widespread domestic animal species in the world. (FAO, 2016)‘.
However, strongly organised activist lobbies (https://moreaboutchicken.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Activist_Overview.pdf ) seek to obstruct and point the finger at the public who choose a de facto omnivorous diet, disseminating continuous documents and criticisms against the industry that we at MAC verify are often based on outdated information.
We therefore list below some general observations, which respond to many of the main criticisms of anti-farming activists.
With this short list, which is in addition to the many articles in this blog, MAC also intends to highlight the quality of European professionals throughout the supply chain who ensure the constant availability of quality food:
- It is important to know that the objections of anti-farming organisations concern animals that ‘exist’ solely by ‘our will’. These are animals that are not taken away from ‘free and wild’ nature, but are selected and made to multiply to provide us with nourishment by methods of natural selection, which make it possible to identify, within animal populations, only those that display the many positive characteristics that will make the next generations grow with the best growth, health, robustness, correct gait, high cardiopulmonary capacity, etc., because the elimination of defects is part of genetic improvement.
- If we did not need to draw from nature for our food, there would be no cultivation or farming.
- The farming system originates and develops by adapting to the characteristics of the animal selected for reproduction and not vice versa. Farms are therefore necessarily places that protect the selected animals and care for their welfare in order to guarantee healthy, quality food for mankind.
- Professional farmers work with two inescapably connected goals: to provide healthy food and to make a fair profit from their work. In order to make a profit from farming, it is necessary for the farmer to respect precise rules and care to protect the health of the animal, which, otherwise, if it became sick or unhealthy, could not be sold.
- There is no evidence that animal welfare organisations have ever tried to invest in even a single farm conducted according to their ideals despite claiming they are sustainable and valid.
- Modern poultry farming systems have progressively created optimal conditions for an healthy and stress-free growth of the animals, the most obvious of which are that the animal does not have to struggle to find food and water, which is provided abundantly, safely, controlled and evenly distributed throughout the rearing area, so that there is no competition between animals to reach the food.
- The nature of animal husbandry has eliminated the stress that resulted from the need to defend oneself from predators. Modern farms are true protected places where animals do not have to seek shelter from the weather and predators as they would if they were outdoors.
- Protected farms avoid the outbreak of diseases, especially those transmissible by wildlife, which is the primary cause of epidemics, along with accidental factors resulting from contamination with germs and bacteria introduced through carelessness on the part of those working there.
- The most risk-protected flocks are those that do not involve going outdoors. If any animal that falls ill (including humans) is placed in the presence of others, it is obvious that the possibility of infection increases. This is the reason why sick child is treated and kept isolated and does not attend school. While it is true that animals (including humans) that lead ‘rustic’ lives may have more natural antibodies than those that live in ‘protected’ environments, it is also true that this is precisely why protected flocks are protected.
- Aggression between animals of the same species, stems from the competitive spirit, but get worse in poultry with puberty, after 100/105 days while broilers are bred for 45 or 84 days depending on the growth rate of the farm under consideration.
- The issue of cages is often cited by activists as if it were a practice still in use. This criticism is specious because, while broilers have never been cage-reared, for laying hens the replacement with other systems is an activity that started many years ago and will be completed in 2026. The total replacement of the old systems is being phased in gradually as the costs of adaptation are all borne by the farmers.
- Soya is referred to by activists as a food that induces invasive cultivation and dependence on imports, when in fact it is only one of the feed ingredients (about 20%). To claim that this implies a strong addiction is at least risky.
- Professional poultry farms are all respectful of animals, people and the planet. This is reiterated by official statistics, management manuals, researchers, independent veterinarians, history. Of all broilers currently reared, only 3% do not make it to the end of the cycle. 70 years ago, this percentage was at least 10 times higher. The millions of animals slaughtered to keep recent AI epidemics under control are a small percentage (only 2%) of all the birds placed. Epidemics in the past, on rural farms, often went so far as to kill all the animals reared.
- There are no natural behaviours prevented by farming. Bearing in mind that these are, in any case, animals intended for human consumption, chickens are nevertheless the best cared for and managed of any animal bred for that purpose. If anything, we could observe how pets live forced into spaces that are unnatural for them, fed disproportionately, adorned according to fashion, mutilated for aesthetic reasons or to prevent them from mating except when they are deemed to belong to a pedigree worth of attention.
The editorial staff of M.A.C.
