Respect the Chickens

It's very nice and fluffy to be thinking about which vet schools I might apply to, but there's some poultry nutrition research projects to be conducted between now and then.

Because of my accelerated time line (a master's degree in 14-16 months is not impossible but it will be damned hard work), we need to start our first experiment in May, the second in late June.

So the first group of 120 chicks, just 1 day old, will be arriving in about two and a half weeks.

Animal experiments are much more highly regulated than they used to be, and I think that's a Good Thing. Not only do we need to consider the conditions in which they will be raised, both in the lab and in production settings, but we need to treat the animals as humanely as possible, even up to that final step, euthanasia. Sacrifice. Some of the chickens are going to be killed so that we can collect specific samples from their innards.

Well, let's be honest--all the chickens will be killed. But only some of them by us.

Perhaps you didn't know, but the chicken meat you buy in the store, no matter what form it is in, comes from strains of chickens known as broilers. There are other strains, layers, that produce eggs. These different strains have been exquisitely manipulated (through the usual indirect selection processes, not via direct genetic modification) to perform these functions. Broilers are typically slaughtered and turned into packaged products at 42 days of age. Yep--6 weeks old.

(Don't feel bad for the chickens. Cows and dogs have been equally, heavily modified by human needs and whims.)

At the end of each of our experiments, the chickens that we don't sacrifice ourselves for analysis will be sold to local poultry processors. I was surprised to learn today that there is quite some competition amongst the processors to purchase the remaining birds--but after all, they lived a pretty good life, were monitored daily, were fed carefully crafted diets designed to maximize their performance (which in the case of broilers is to grow very large breasts) and that turns into profit for the processors.

I am not a vegetarian. I have flirted with it on and off for years, and in fact I prepare vegetarian meals a couple of times a week, mainly because I quite like tofu and steamed veg and beans and rice and other yummy and nutritious things, and those things are rather cheap and easy to prepare (how hard is it to boil up a pot of beans?). And while I no longer eat beef, I regularly eat chicken and pork and eggs.

I asked my advisor if she is a vegetarian, given that she's been conducting poultry nutrition experiments for 20 years. She laughed and said, no, not at all! She eats eggs and chicken both.

There are certainly moral arguments for not eating animals. There are also compelling arguments for embracing our core omnivore--that's the condition that our biochemistry evolved to support.

I don't want to lose sight of the purpose of the experiments, nor lose sight of the fact that we are using these organisms for a purpose in which they have no say, no influence.

We need to make sure that we do it right. Do it humanely. Do it respectfully.