"Buddhism and Animals"/Big Chicken (video)

Joel Kincaid, 2017; Terry Gross (Fresh Air); CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

 

How can I help animals?

The first precept is to abstain from killing -- from taking the life of any living beings or causing anyone else to do so. The motive is ahimsa, harmlessness or nonharming. The other four major precepts, Ten Precepts, or hundreds of monastic precepts teach us to abstain from harming in other ways. Some people kill people, and nearly everyone in the world today is co-opted into killing animals. Some avoid eating red meat, which is a good abstention and good for their health and the health of our planet, but then eat fish or birds (mainly chickens) or eggs...

But what about chickens?

"Cage-free" is a sham in practice but sounds so good people buy it (Charlie Neibergall/AP).

.

The chicken for sale at the local grocery store isn't like the chicken our grandparents used to eat. 

They're [chemically altered and] bigger and more "breasty," says public health journalist Maryn McKenna — and that's by  [genetically modified and industrial] design.

 

"In the United States, [flesh eaters] much prefer to eat white meat, and so [industrial scale killers] have bred chickens and genetically redesigned chickens in order for them to have a lot of breast meat," McKenna says.

I'm Gross, not chicken

She attributes the change in poultry to factors like precision breeding, hormones, and nutrition but adds, "Antibiotics started this process."

 

Many large poultry farms [force] feed antibiotics to their chickens in an effort to prevent disease. But McKenna says that humans who eat those chickens are at risk of developing not only antibiotic-resistant gastrointestinal infections but urinary tract infections as well.

She chronicles the use of antibiotics in the poultry industry in her new book, Big Chicken. More + AUDIO

• Download
• Transcript
• (The Salt) Big Chicken: The Medical Mystery that Traced Back to Slaughterhouse Workers