Despite the fact that poultry has become the main source of meat and its contribution to human nutrition is increasing (“Poultry is the most common domestic animal species in the world (FAO)“), you can do all the advertising you want to a chicken or an egg, but if there is a lack of proper information about how the supply chain that serves to provide chickens and eggs for human consumption works, all it takes is for a few dramatically constructed films or texts to reach the public, instrumentally constructed, to make the professional poultry industry appear as an evil entity.
In fact, the attitude of the organizations opposing protected poultry farms (otherwise called intensive, but which would be more correct to call “protected” https://nutriamocidibuonsenso.it/cosa-sa-chi-critica-gli-allevamenti-avicoli/) is, on closer inspection, the result of the intersection of ideology and unwillingness to scientific investigation.
All it would take is open dialogue and calm communication to come up with less heartache and annoying, even paradoxical, interference to perfect the already high levels of attention to animal welfare that the poultry industry refines year after year and that have led to a steady increase in biological efficiency and environmental sustainability.
In recent years, to give just one example, the sector has selected chickens that to reach a weight of 2.5 kilograms, consume half a kilogram of feed less than in 2010, which translates into a 37 percent reduction in the land needed to produce, precisely, the feed. Figures that are destined to improve year on year precisely because of the poultry industry’s ongoing commitment to take care of animal welfare.
Indeed, it should not be forgotten that poultry farming aims to make available food that is simultaneously healthy, nutritious and affordable to most. And it is also necessary to consider the fact that the very pursuit of obtaining economic returns from this type of enterprise, collaterally produces (little known) constant increases in animal welfare…which is nevertheless the issue that is most closely watched by both the industry and its detractors.
It is seldom reflected on that the quality of attention designed to raise animal welfare standards, motivated by the need to also make it profitable to devote oneself to it, “automatically” results in healthy and “meaty” animals because it “forces” the industry to study solutions that, being geared to balance themselves economically, are also consequently inclined to keep the animal healthy and thus act for its welfare.
Not only that.
Poultry farming is a sector in which there are aspects of sustainability known unfortunately only among insiders, who are focused more on doing than saying. A sustainability that is paradoxically put at risk precisely by environmentalist and animalist ideologies that, even when they are understandable and respectable, are conducted with hostile approaches and often also with a certain form of ill-concealed cowardice highlighted by the fact that these organized groups, moved even by potentially positive intentions, do not build direct paths of dialogue with the real protagonists of the sector, but rather with intermediate users (processors, large-scale retail chains, restaurant chains…).
Hostilities between animal/environmentalists and the poultry industry thus struggle to be resolved because of the clash between science and ideology. Much more progress could be made in both areas by building a dialogue that is aware of the limitations and flaws present on both sides, with the goal of finding shared solutions, provided, however, that the scientific and research aspects are stimulated toward achievable solutions that are certainly not identifiable with ideologies and instrumentalization.
Today, on the other hand, animal rights activists, not being bearers of scientific content, lacking overall visions and having a tendency to use only their “belly,” manifest themselves as an entity with the sole ultimate goal of shutting down all animal husbandry activities. It is therefore obvious that on the one hand, a wall is spontaneously put up in defense, and on the other hand, this wall is simply seen as an obstacle.
Mediation is needed, and that is precisely why we need dialogue and fair and impartial communication. It would also benefit the depth and credibility of the content of publicity in this sector, which to date is instead frankly embarrassing because of the banality with which it is expressed and especially because of the absence of the information that https://moreaboutchicken.com/ and https://nutriamocidibuonsenso.it/ are striving to give.
These conflict-creating issues develop just about everywhere, and in some countries they are also addressed in different ways. For example, where there is evidence of destructive and irrational overkill by organizations, some governments intervene.
In Australia, for example, a proposal has been introduced in the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament to protect livestock farmers from harm caused by animal activists who often break in causing damage to property and exposing farms to bacterial contamination and infection by unknowingly, but also irresponsibly, bringing them in from the outside. The bill includes an amendment to the Penal Code, with penalties of up to five years in prison for anyone who illegally enters a farm, commits damage or theft to property or incites others to do so. It will also be a crime -in Australia- to take and transmit videos or photos, with exemptions only for journalists making reports of proven public interest: https://www.alimentando.info/australia-proposta-di-legge-per-tutelare-gli-allevatori-dai-danni-degli-animalisti/