This is the announcement that we at M.A.C. are certain the world poultry industry would wish to see published. Certain of this wish, we take it upon ourselves to explain its significance.
Ever since (some 70 years ago) the global poultry industry was structured to strive to provide healthy, affordable and accessible food for all, chickens and laying hens have been constantly observed in their behaviour by research centres, dedicated to understanding the best possible conditions for these animals to enjoy better health and better growing capacities than their country relatives to provide us with safe and readily available food.
As a result, animal welfare gradually became the benchmark for any serious livestock farm. The size of the earth’s population then suggested that providing food for all requires planning, investment, commitment, seriousness, ethics … and also quantity.
One of the most interesting features of this now global system is that with few differences due to the different geographic location of the farms and therefore different climatic conditions, the research centres have made it possible to spread, among all the seriously committed and rule-abiding breeders, a breeding model that respects both the animal and the needs expressed by the demand for healthy, cheap, nutritious food.
Livestock farms that are described as intensive, are actually intensively protected, large places that periodically house thousands of animals. And they are present in practically every country in the world.
Raising animals (chickens and laying hens in our case) is only apparently simple. It is only so if one thinks that a livestock farm, the purpose of which is to feed thousands of people, is comparable to what a farmer does on his farm with a few animals to meet the needs of his family and a few neighbours.
But this is obviously not the case. Any serious breeding is an endeavour with strict rules to prevent, for example, the animals from falling ill. To achieve even this goal without resorting to treatment of any kind, the care of breeding conditions is extreme.
Some insights at these links:
Yet, listening to animal rights activists -gathered in brotherhoods in many parts of the world and with the declared aim of wanting to ensure the animal welfare of farmed animals- they seem to be convinced that the chicken from a small farmer’s henhouse is better, healthier, better cared for… and there is no way, so far, to make them think about the fundamentally wrong things they think and therefore also say. They believe that animal welfare can be measured by human perceptions, but these are not applicable to animals, so in their frequent forays into the media they constantly make instrumental use of information that is distorted in its actual meaning. A small example: they speak of mistreatment on farms, when in fact the farm is a place designed and managed to avoid discomfort, disease, aggression from outside, …
In these groups, associated in various ways with each other, one perceives a kind of incomprehensible rejection of the scientific approach, without which it is not possible to address any topic seriously.
This approach of theirs, which is objectively violent in the ways in which they act to assert issues that are largely outdated by the actual facts, as a side effect inevitably generates in their potential interlocutors (the farms and specialised research centres) a basically defensive reaction. Yet the poultry sector has repeatedly shown that it welcomes stimuli that have generated in-depth scientific research. Two eyes see better than one, but scientific expertise is also needed to verify all the side effects of choices that might seem useful, but which often reveal counterproductive effects on animal welfare and environmental impact.
A very clear example of a dialogue with animal rights activists that has generated certain choices, adoptable and adopted by poultry farming even though these lead to side effects on the environment and the economy that cannot be guessed by the uninitiated, came from the request to make chickens bred for their meat live longer. In order to heed this demand, especially to show that anything can be done, but it is better to follow a conscious and scientific approach, the industry had to select chickens with different genetics than broilers. Therefore, breeds have been selected whose natural characteristics are to grow more slowly. Breeds that are slaughtered after about 80 days, a period in which they reach the weight that a broiler reaches in half the time.
In this case they have listened to the irrational demands of animal rights activists who do not take into account the fact that an animal consumes feed, water, space, energy dedicated to maintaining the high quality of its stay on the farm… and rearing it for twice the number of days otherwise required for a broiler doubles costs and reduces the availability of meat, which has repercussions both on the cost to the consumer – which sees the price almost double – and on the environment for the simple fact that the consumption of natural resources increases to adapt to the demand for slow growth. ( https://moreaboutchicken.com/why-do-slow-growing-chickens-cost-almost-twice-as-much/ )
One wonders what the real purpose of animal rights activists is, whose constant demand for funds to pursue battles that then consume those economic resources to spread unjustified scaremongering without scientific backing.
We do not want to think that animal-rights associations have become employment centres that demand funds in order to maintain ideologies that in some ways are also harmful due to the undue alarm they spread, despite the evidence to the contrary being there and documented.
Providing healthy, nutritious, inexpensive and therefore accessible food is an activity that should instead receive constant applause and, why not, encouragement for improvement.
The industry is open to scientific comparisons, and the headline announcement below makes this clear, putting only a couple of conditions that we hope animal rights activists will be able to make their own:
Looking for non-belligerent counterpart…
… and especially not prejudiced
M.A.C. can take over as bilateral spokesperson.
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