Suffering chickens not good for our health

IT may well be that a bird-related flu is heading our way, but even if it doesn’t become the pandemic we are all being advised to prepare for, we can at least learn about the Chinese chicken industry — something that wouldn’t be headline news otherwise.

According to reports, a truly staggering figure of 14 billion birds are being processed currently by the Chinese chicken industry. And I thought that we were doing well here in Ireland with our 60 million chickens bred and slaughtered annually.

I do not have a figure for the number of chickens being bred and slaughtered annually worldwide, but logic would suggest that it must be between 50 and 100 billion, given the prevalence of the industry across the globe.

What have we created? A nightmare for chickens, for a start. Fifty billion and more chickens crammed into massive, windowless sheds, suffering from crippling bone disease and dying from heart attacks before they reach their slaughter age of 41 days.

And our nightmare? A health time-bomb that seems like it may be already exploding in our six billion and more faces.

Gerry Boland

Keadue

Co Roscommom