How much do you know about those breasts?
No, we’re not still talking about Dita Von Teese. We’re talking about dinner.
Strange, but I was having this exact conversation the other night, as I was cooking the living hell out of a couple of pieces of chicken. Then this article pops into my inbox.
In an effort to eat compassionately, many people choose free-range chickens and eggs — assuming that the birds lived happy, high-quality lives before they became dinner. A free-range label, however, doesn’t guarantee your poultry had a worry-free existence.
Swedish researchers have discovered that, if farmers aren’t extremely careful, bacterial infections like E. coli can run rampant through free-range chicken flocks. The finding raises questions about what’s best for both animals and people.
There just doesn’t seem to be a safe, humane way to raise poultry for consumption. Battery chickens are crushed into tiny cages and usually fed steroids to grow large and fast for slaughter. Not cool.
But let me tell you a thing or two I learned about free range chickens while I was on the farm in Kansas. Chickens are damn disgusting. They will eat anything. We’d throw them leftovers from dinner, which often included chicken, and they would eat it. Disgusting cannibals! They also eat the eggs that they lay. We won’t even go into the amount of poop they manage to get in their food and water… instead let’s talk about something even more gross.
Free range chickens could theoretically survive the summer months without being fed by humans. Here’s how. They eat bugs, right? In fact, they gorge on them. So, they shit the bugs out, and the chicken shit attracts more bugs! The chickens then consume their own feces which is now full of yummy bugs.
Hungry? Didn’t think so.
The chickens at Castle Argghhh! Farms weren’t for consumption, but for eggs. Still, watching them was almost enough to put me off my dinner.
Almost. Instead I just cooked the high holy hell out of whatever chicken I’m about to eat.
Enjoy your dinner.
Yum. Just finished a steaming bowl of home made chicken vegetable noodle soup (aka–throw all the leftovers in a pot and boil it for a while). Chickens are disgusting, but delicious.
Comment by TxSkirt — January 24, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
I love chicken. But then again I’ve a bit of cajun in me and so I’ll eat almost anything. Squirrel, frog, allimagater, crawfishes, raccoons, you name it, an if I don’t have the recipe I probably know somebody that does. Chicken? That ain’t noth’in.
Comment by Big Al — January 24, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
Sorry Wendy, but lots of carnivorous critters eat anything and everything. Pretty much anything in the sea, for example, eats pretty much everything else, one way or another. Lobsters, crabs, fish: vacuum-cleaners.
Comment by Binks, Webelf — January 24, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
I just e-mailed this to my daughter. Seeing as she is or more likely now was the queen of chicken is the only meat worth eating lady she will probably sustain herself from now on with cornflakes and raisins. That is until she realizes there isn`t enough energy in that to catch up to me and beat me with her broom for ruining the only meat she would eat fore life. That was a neat post.
Comment by Bob Devine — January 25, 2009 @ 5:11 am
Well, of course, organic vegetables use organic fertilizers which are mostly various forms of animal feces.
Comment by ErikTheRed — January 25, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
Gee thanks RG. What you’re saying is we’re all full of s**t.
Comment by Jim R — January 26, 2009 @ 1:52 am
“Chickens are damn disgusting. They will eat anything. ”
That’s nature (real life) for ya….just one damn thing eating another damn thing…Life is one big-assed restaurant…just make sure you are always at the top of the food chain and you got it licked.
Comment by WL Mackenzie Redux — January 26, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
[...] BRASS BALLS Radio: Cold Snap Edition; and “How much do you know about those breasts?” …. [...]
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