McNuggets, anyone?
London, ON, July 2010
About this photo: I'm seeing orange this week, so I'm hoping you will, too. Click here to share your own orange-themed vision. We call it Thematic Photographic, and we promise it won't hurt a bit.There's a chicken processing plant in my town. The second-hand reports of what it's like inside aren't pretty: 100,000 chickens a day, and sights and sounds that would turn us all into instant vegetarians and freak out our children for the rest of their lives.
The trucks that carry the chickens
into the plant - the last mile, I guess - look like overgrown Lego creations. After months of seeing them from afar, I finally caught up with one as it turned into the security checkpoint. [Pause to consider security for chickens. There, I'm good.] I happened to have my camera on me (what, you're surprised?) so I ducked over to the side opposite the employees eating lunch on a nearby picnic table and started shooting.Aside from the stench, I was struck by the absolute silence of the thing. No clucking, no movement, nothing. Either the poor birds had been drugged beyond consciousness for their final trip, or they were already dead. Either way, I'm eating far less chicken these days.
Your turn: Is the humble McNugget's dietary reign destined to end someday?
I do think humans are designed to eat meat. The way we treat the animals on their way to becoming our dinner is another matter.
ReplyDeleteYour close up is fantastic, I always think orange and blue go well together.
Quote: - I happened to have my camera on me (what, you're surprised?) so I ducked over to the side opposite the employees eating lunch on a nearby picnic table and started shooting.
ReplyDeleteI had a litlle chuckle here, Chooks on the way to be slaughtered, and you started 'shooting'!!! Perhaps clicking may have been a better word to use!
I have one of these plants near me as well, and the stench is, sometimes, overpowering at times. I only hope that the end, is humane...
I hate to think what the chooks go through before they are finally slaughtered - and I am a meat eater - I just don't like the way most chooks are treated.
ReplyDelete...is it destined to end one day?
ReplyDeletemy guess is not while the divide between "cute chicks" and "meat'n'gravy" continues to exist
that or....maybe if we find out that this way of raising and dispatching what ends up as our food is doing us harm, then it will end
either way, I can happily survive as a veggi and I Know that i don't do wringing chickens necks.
so maybe that's just as well,
unless I barter my skills of somethingorother for my neighbours skills as a neck wringer....?
Being apex predators, humans will always be omnivorous I suspect. But that said, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if McNuggets were outlawed at one of the G-something summits.
ReplyDeleteDo you suppose these birds were already aware of what was coming somehow? The idea of them being too drugged to cluck right before they're about to become food ... (pause to consider the lingering effects of such drugs on the flesh eaters...)