Posted on 06/11/2003 3:44:30 PM PDT by UnklGene
I Hate Chickens
By Nathan Porter
Well, well, well. PETA has enlisted actors Alec Baldwin and Richard Pryor to threaten Burger King into meeting the same animal welfare standards adopted by fast-food rival McDonald’s. The two have signed their names to a letter asking Burger King franchisees to meet or exceed certain standards for slaughtering cattle and chickens. Getting Alec Baldwin to sign on for this duty is not surprising. But Richard Pryor? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Richard Pryor speak out on anything of this nature. His face, which looks like an overly charred Whopper, would seem to make him the perfect spokesman for Burger King not against them.
“Regrettably, while Burger King has issued several statements, it has made no improvements whatsoever in the appalling living and dying conditions for the animals it uses,” said the letter, which was signed by both actors.
Now I don’t know whether Alec Baldwin or Richard Pryor are vegans, vegetarians or carnivores. Baldwin looks like a meat eater to me. And the last time I checked the FDA had not reclassified cocaine as a meat product, so I doubt Pryor has the time or occasion to eat meat.
I am a vegetarian not because I love the animals most humans eat, but because I hate them. I particularly hate chickens, the foulest creature on the planet. Why anyone would want to ingest such an animal is beyond me. But a lot of people do, and I don’t have a problem with that. Eat all you want, just don’t get all misty eyed ‘cause your critter dujour died an “appalling” death. As far as I’m concerned, chickens ought to be slaughtered in the cruelest way imaginable. What possible difference does it make in the taste of one’s chicken-part nugget if the chicken was at peace with its destiny when its heart stopped beating? As though once a chicken is dead it cares how it got that way. As though when it’s alive the chicken cares how it is about to die. IT IS A CHICKEN. IT IS STUPID.
What's appalling is not the death of a chicken, but the life of a chicken. I live in a region where chicken farming is big business, and coming from farming people, I understand the need of farmers to meet the demand for this “meat” product. But chickens are just plain disgusting. They are smelly, hideous little creatures that walk around clucking, pecking and shitting all day. Frankly, I’m not interested in eating anything that shits, and I am particularly uninterested in eating something that shits the way a chicken shits. The Pentagon ought to look into chicken defecation as a possible avenue for missile defense. The force with which a chicken can blow crap out of its ass is astonishing, and I’m quite sure that aimed correctly one of these chicken-shit missile interceptors could take out any number of incoming ICBMs.
Like most things in life, my hatred of chickens comes from a bad experience in my youth. In the 5th grade my class was given the project of observing a chicken egg until it hatched then caring for the chick until the end of the school year. The little chicks were cute and I managed to finagle my mother into allowing me to bring mine home as a pet, at least for the summer. Everywhere that I went my little chick was sure to go. I guess it consider me its mother.
But as the chicken grew, it lost its cuteness and became nothing more than an ugly, white bird that let fly with the most explosive bowel movements known to animal kind. One day, my chicken was sitting on my shoulder (I know, I was a weird kid) when it let go with the biggest dump of its rapidly shortening life. I was covered with chicken shit. Then I decided to conduct a little experiment. Would a chicken eat chicken meat? The answer is yes. How sick is that? When the first strain of Mad Chicken disease is discovered, it won’t surprise me if it’s traced back to my little experiment.
As an adult, not a week goes by when I don’t encounter a chicken truck on the interstate. A tractor trailer full of stupid, ugly, excrement covered chickens heading off to slaughter without a single understanding of what is to become of them. I often get trapped behind one of those trucks in traffic, forcing me to inhale that ungodly, chicken smell while hundreds of smarmy creatures stare at me with their insidious, beady eyes.
Once in a while a chicken (either because it is smart or stupid, I haven’t decided yet) gets loose and falls from the truck. The usual result of which is a flattened chicken in the middle of the highway. On occasion, however, a chicken will survive its fall and end up clucking along the roadside. One day, I was driving along the interstate and spotted a live chicken on an overpass. He was just standing there in that two-foot strip of concrete that separates the right lane from the concrete wall, looking aimlessly at the passing traffic. If he had walked three feet to the end of the overpass he would have had a clear shot at an open field, but he just stood there. Why? Because he is a stupid chicken. Had I spotted him earlier I would have veered to the right a couple of feet and crushed him with my right front tire. Why? Because I hate chickens, and there is no such thing as an appalling death for a chicken…unless, of course, the dead chicken is eaten by a human. Now that’s appalling.
Of course, while Alec Baldwin and Richard Pryor are trying to make chicken and cattle killing a little less appalling, Hong Kong continues to kill all of its 1.2 million chickens in an effort to halt the spread of avian bird flu. The government effort is designed to stop the strain from mixing with other viruses that may harm humans. I wonder if Alec and Richard will send a letter to Hong Kong officials insisting that the mass killings be done in a manner that the chickens do not consider appalling?
Therefore, since we have established that the manner in which the chicken is killed ultimately does not matter to the chicken, for whose benefit is PETA imposing these standards of dying conditions? It must be for Alec Baldwin’s benefit and I fail to see why Burger King should spend once red cent to make Alec Baldwin feel better about how a Whopper or chicken sandwich is made. Besides, isn’t he supposed to be living in France by now?
The Northwestern Law Professor? Why does she hate chickens?
I like the advertisement for Chic' Filet which shows a bunch of cows saying, "Eat more chicken."
It would grow up moping around with other "loser chickens", completely self-absorbed and convinced that the world was against him/her - at least compared with the Alpha Chickens. Most would register as Democrats. Depressing songs would be muzaked into the coops. At the right time, the woeful bird would be left alone in a room with a gun, and the decision to "peck-the-trigger" would consciously be made.
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