Why I Killed a Chicken on Friday

I killed a chicken on Friday because I wanted to prove to myself that I really am ok with eating meat.  I recently read a book called Chicken: The dangerous transformation of America's favorite food by Steve Striffler which discusses the commercial methods for raising, butchering, and selling chicken as an industrial product.  After reading this book, I realized that I am uninterested in supporting industrial chicken manufacturers and that I'd rather grow my own or purchase meat from small scale local farmers.  Unfortunately, buying pasture-raised chicken from local farmers can get expensive.  Realistically, I'd like to raise my own.  Before investing in a coop and some birds, I wanted to make sure that I could stomach the process of killing and cooking my own food.

There are many reasons why industrial chicken is less healthy and less humane than free range, organic fed chickens.  Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) certainly don't keep the animals' welfare in mind.  According to Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle, "If you can envision one thousand chickens in your bathroom, in cages stacked to the ceiling, you're honestly getting the picture.  (Actually a six-foot by eight room could house 1,152)"  CAFOs also use methods like antibiotics and hormones to produce plump birds fast.  Operations like these not only exploit the chickens, but also their laborers.  They seem to have neither the animals', laborers', nor customers' safety in mind.

That being said, I love eating meat, especially chicken.  Although the animals obviously have to die to produce meat, I feel better about consuming meat that I know lived a happy, natural existence and died in the least painful way possible.  So I learned to slaughter and dress a chicken from a one year old free range rooster at my job on an organic farm.  He lived with about 300 hens and was the king of the roost until his spurs began growing in.  When his spurs started growing, he became more like the dictator of the roost.  He got increasingly aggressive with both the hens and the people on the farm.  So we decided that it was time to overthrow this dictator rooster.

We put him upside down in a cone and cut the arteries in his neck so he would bleed out quickly.  If you sever the esophagus by cutting too deeply or removing the head, they struggle to breathe while they bleed out and this causes additional pain and panic to the bird.  While he died, I felt a distinct sadness for the animal and the process that I was apart of.  It certainly wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was a respectful and peaceful one.  We'll be cooking him in a coq au vin recipe this week.  After having this experience, I will not stop eating meat, but I will have a greater appreciation for the animals that produce it.