"Heavenly Eggs" aren't so heavenly....Monks abuse chickens

[Mend]

PETA did an undercover video of the factory farming practices at the Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, S.C. There were articles in "The New York Times" www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21chicken.html and "USA Today"
www.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/01/peta_calls_fowl.html as well as "The Washington Post" and local papers and tv. It seems the monks would like to project a happy heavenly egg. They own about 38,000 chickens whose beaks are trimmed without anaesthesia when they are three days old. The hens get crammed into crowded crates for several years, never let out. They are starved up to two weeks at a time to induce molting, a way to increase egg production. When they are finally "useless", they are stuffed into cages to go to slaughter, often causing breaks to their bones. The monks pathetic rebuttal was that the chickens are "happier in cages because they don't catch diseases or get eaten by predators". Wonder what the chickens would say, if they still had their beaks and could talk? And these people tell us about the sanctity of life?

[Taverner]

1. Well, simply put killing an animal to eat its muscle tissue is abuse

Whether or not you can live with it is up to you. Just be honest with yourself.

I'm a carnivore, and I admit it.

[Mend]

3. once upon a time, chicken were kept in happy flocks in fenced

yards. They lay eggs in the barns, the farmer's wife or kids collected the eggs each morning. The chickens, social animals, went out each day to peck for bugs and cluck around. They could flap their wings, walk around, look after their chicks. A pretty good life, and when they stopped laying, someone humanely wrung their neck, they were plucked and eaten. No problem there...it is the factory farming abuses that I can't stand and the monks are intentionally playing on us softies with their "heavenly eggs"..

[Taverner]

5. Even a humane wringing of neck is still a wringing of neck

And my house is as glass as yours - so please pardon my hypocrisy...

[Mend]

6. everyone dies....that is a fact. I am sure you would pick a

quick, painless death over riding in a packed crate with broken bones, without food, water, and much air after a life over never-ending misery.

[Taverner]

7. Oh definitely a humane death is better

Like with the DP, I am against it, but if you are going to have it, at least it should be humane (I am against some in the anti-DP community who argue that the DP should be as inhumane as possible to alert people to the nature of the death penalty)

And as a meat eater, I do try to buy cage-free chickens, grass-fed beef, etc...

But I realize that an animal did die so that I could eat them. My actions did inflict suffering on another living thing. I just can't get around that.

[EFerrari]

18. When my mom moved to the country, we got chickens.

And they were beautiful and they took walks twice a day -- they looked like a church group combing the neighborhood for unbelievers.

We could NOT eat them. We could NOT kill them. We gathered eggs and even that felt a little creepy.

One chicken used to visit me in my office every day at 10 a.m. She'd fly in through the window, shimmy across pane, fly over to my bookcase and lay her egg. We named her Ella because she seemed to be scat singing during the whole process.

They OWNED us, and it was just karma because before we bought it, the property had been the site of those horrible cock fights, complete with a grandstand and a snack bar.

[Quantess]

22. Chickens have dignity when they have a little freedom.

I hear some "knowledgeable" people complain that chickens are filthy, disgusting, creatures who constantly fight and pick at each other. Well, that may be true when the chickens are cramped together in muddy cages and get annoyed with the too-close-proximity and boring environment.

But, while chickens do have a pecking order, they are social birds who appreciate each other's company, and, get along very well when they have enough space.
As for filthy and disgusting, yes, they poop all over the place, so I guess you could call that filthy. Chicken droppings are great for the soil, though!

Chickens aren't the smartest animals, but, as any chicken owner can tell you, they have their own perplexing thought processes. You can almost see them thinking. This may sound weird but, you can often tell a chicken's expressions. They express themselves with their voice, body language, eyes, etc, and you can tell whether a chicken is happy or not. Those poor, exploited, factory chickens have probably had their spirits crushed and don't bother to express themselves the way a free range chicken would.

[EFerrari]

23. It's an obscenity. And not an unimportant statement about how our culture

treats life. :shrug:

[Quantess]

38. chickens' beaks should be cut when the birds are cramped together.

Chickens fight too much when they are in too-close-proximity. The way to solve the problem is to clip the top part of the beak.

Here's a new idea; Let's give chickens enough room so that they don't peck each other. No wait, that will cost too much money! Don't do that.

Packing the chickens close together (yes while still alive) will just result in..............oh, nevermind.......

[flvegan]

59. Seems the answer is NOT intense confinement then, eh?

I mean, when you have to start dismembering an animal inhumanely...well, maybe the "should" might be best a "shouldn't"

[Quantess]

73. Yes, that is precisely what I meant.

Give animals a little space, a little room to flex their wings, and the animal (chickens, in this case) can regain their natural dignity.

[Quantess]

40. The little hen is very cute and graceful.

Once you have free range chickens, and taste their eggs, (and yes, the chickens notice when you take their eggs, so you have to be sly) you will notice the difference in egg flavor. Home grown eggs have a much better flavor, probably because free range chickens eat bugs and worms! Oh well, higher protein content.

[femmedem]

47. My husband had a pet chicken when he was a boy.

Josephine. She liked to cuddle up inside his coat on cold days. Like Ella, she was part of a happy, free-roaming flock.

[MissB]

8. I have a small backyard flock

They've been around for a couple of years, still laying plenty of eggs. When they stop laying eggs, I'll get new chicks but these will live out their lives here. They don't live terribly long anyway.

Charming creatures. Mine don't stay in their coop - they fly over their fence and walk around my property all day, then fly back in and head for their henhouse at night.

I'll never buy another commercial egg.

[Mend]

14. I think you and your chicks' eggs are truly heavenly eom

[Arkansas Granny]

26. My dad always kept a few old hens around the place for the eggs.

They were free range chickens and the flock was never culled. When the ladies got too old to lay, they still got the same feeding as the laying hens until they died a natural death. Since we made pets out of our chickens, there is no way we could have eaten the old girls.

[Mend]

29. that is so good. Why can't everyone do it this way? I guess you

don't get 17,000 eggs a day like the monks.

[LWolf]

62. Once upon a time is today.

I have a flock that has a large coop to roost in, some 3-sided sheds with food, water, and nesting boxes, their own large yard which opens onto the orchard, where they peck and scratch to their hearts content, and daily go over and through the fences into the horses' pastures to happily scratch through the dirt and fresh manure. All in all, they have access to about 3 acres. They lay in their nesting boxes and return to roost each evening. If I want to catch one, to eat or for other purposes, I simply wait until it's dark and they are roosting, go in, and pick one up. They are sleepy and relaxed and there is no stress involved. If I want to eat one, a small, sharp knife, a quick cut, and the bird never wakes up. No stress, and not a bad way to go after a good life.

There's a rooster out there right now that should be eaten; I don't need any more roosters for the few hens. He's just so handsome, and so mild-mannered, and such a pleasure to be around, that I can't do the deed.

Eggs from my place are heavenly; fresh, wholesome, laid by contended, healthy free-range hens.

[TomInTib]

2. And then our dogs eat the chickens.

Or we do (chicken "tenders").

Most of the non-whole chicken consumed comes from retired "layers" such as these.

[Mend]

4. I have no problem with the food chain, only how they are treated

when they are alive.

[Warren DeMontague]

44. That's not how PETA feels about it, however.

If PETA were really just about improving conditions for animals raised for food, they would have a lot more support.

[NashVegas]

63. I'm a Meat Eater and Support PETA Big Time

My beliefs aren't as extreme as PETA's but if it weren't for them, we'd only have had the SPCA saying 'please' and 'thank you.'

[Warren DeMontague]

68. I accept that PETA has done some good work. But they've alienated a lot of people like me.

I wish there were an organization working to improve conditions, educate against factory farming, promote local, organic, free range farms... that didn't have the extreme agenda PETA has, and didn't engage in morally reprehensible PR campaigns-- like comparing Jews in the Holocaust to Chickens at KFC.

It's funny, more than half the PETA supporters say the same thing; "I support them, but they're more extreme than I am". I'd suspect they have a lot of meat eaters in their ranks; I wonder why they don't listen to them.

Maybe it's like Pro-Life Organizations whose members still use birth control, even though criminalizing contraception (to the extent of even prosecuting any women who take the pill for "murder") is one of the prime ideological objectives of the so-called "pro-life" movement)

[NashVegas]

61. It's Impossible to Find "Fowl" Anymore

That was the generic package-name of hens that were older and had slightly tougher meat.

That's what my mom always used when she was making a chicken & gravy dinner.

[China_cat]

9. I have been to Mepkin Abbey

(where the monks say they have 38,000 lay sisters) and peta lies. In fact, it has to be wondered how they even gained access to the abbey because it is open to visitors to other parts of the compound than the gardens only by reservation.

The operation is clean, chickens are cared for even though they do not roam free. The barns are not even heavy on the amonia fumes prevalent in a lot of poultry operations. Mepkin Abbey sits on the edge of the Francis Marion national forest and predators in the form of raptors (several species of hawks and osprey), bobcats, alligators and hunting dogs that are turned loose after the season are prevalent. In addition, the soil in this area harbors hookworms and other parasites and mosquitoes (SC state bird) carry encephalitis.

Chickens are NOT kept for several years. If peta wants a -real- reason to bitch it might be reasonable to object to allowing them to lay for just a few months and by the age of 9 months are headed to slaughter.

Here is the REAL response from the abbey to peta's charges

http://www.mepkinabbey.org/PETA_Response.htm

[LeftyMom]

10. Persumably they got an investigator hired on there.

If they can get people into labs with high security, getting them hired on at a chicken farm is nothing.

So is all that footage the result of image manipulation? They have video of the dead and dying birds, and of the bird crammed into very small cages.

[China_cat]

12. The abbey does not hire outside people.

And they are not a 'chicken farm'. The eggs support the abbey...it is a Trappist monastery and the monks do the work. During the times they have retreats, participants are permitted to help out but cameras and other electronic devices are not permitted during retreats.

As for image manipulation. No. Not photoshopping...also NOT the abbey.

If you are male, make the reservations for a tour or a retreat and go see for yourself. Females are permitted in the gardens and at the restaurant (which is actually off abbey grounds) and allowed to attend mass but only from the screened balcony.

http://www.mepkinabbey.org/who_visits_mepkin_casual_visitors.htm
http://www.mepkinabbey.org/who_visits_mepkin_retreatants.htm (I see that they now allow women and married couples on retreats. Please note that the monks are vegetarians and retreat participants eat the same diet)
http://www.mepkinabbey.org/who_visits_mepkin_long_term.htm (with at least one picture of the egg production facility)

[LeftyMom]

21. Did you watch the video?

They have video of the investigator asking the monks questions about the chickens, what happens when they're spent (a 3rd party buys them, and sells them to Campbell's for soup,) whether they're going to put two dying ones out of their misery (no) and similar questions. Unless you know of some other place where english speaking monks have thousands and thousands of laying hens, it's there.

And yes, if they have thousands on thousands of chickens, it's a chicken farm. It may be a monestary too, just as many farms are also private homes, but it's a chicken farm, and a decent sized one at that.

[China_cat]

28. The video is cut with images that aren't the abbey.

The barns mainly. Which, if you'd ever seen them, you would know they aren't the same ones shown from the inside in the video.

But, still, the monks do NOT hire help of any kind. And I still say that you need to come and see for yourself.

[Mend]

30. Gormy Cuss, down below here, gives a newspaper link with the

newspaper's own photo showing four chickens with clipped beaks, in a tiny cage.....and more and more at the abbey.

[China_cat]

32. What he has is pictures supplied to Charleston's

equivalent of the Enquirer by peta.

Nobody down here takes the City Paper seriously. Unless you also believe in swamp things and snake oil.

[LeftyMom]

31. I'm going to trust PETA's investigator over some random person on the internets.

They certainly have no incentive to lie, there are plenty of other horrible factory farms they could devote resources to exploiting if this one were really taking care of the birds.

And no, I really don't feel the need to fly cross-country to go look at tortured hens or religious hypocrites, we have plenty of both in California, although not generally on the same plot of land.

[China_cat]

33. Then you don't know. I do. I've been there.

Our Girl Scout plantation is just a few miles from the abbey and during the summer camp season the Catholic girls go to mass there (as I said, on the balcony as women aren't allowed in the chapel proper). And I've been here in Charleston since 1964.

[LeftyMom]

37. Pray tell, do they just let members of the public roam the sheds?

Somehow, I rather doubt that.

[China_cat]

45. No, but you can ask to see...and be granted permission.

The monks are interviewed very often on their operation. They've never denied anyone. There's no need for someone to commit fraud to see what goes on there. Which, it turns out, is what the peta 'operative' did. Posing as a retreatant (for which you have to apply and have a recommend from a local priest, etc) instead of just asking, cutting the video with shots of practices that the monks themselves don't do (the beak trimming...which is done before the monks ever even get the poults) and editing some of the answers gotten from the monks to make them look the worst they possibly could. No mention, of course, of the on-call veterinarian (in an area where farmers would think you're totally nuts to call a vet for a CHICKEN) or the fact that they don't even use commercial feed but grind their own. By hand. Or that the monks themselves are vegetarians.

PETA remarked that the monks should 'bake bread, make jam, or brew beer'. If they really want them to do that, why not offer to set them up in one of those operations? Use some of that $29 million + they have sitting in the bank to actually HELP.

I'm thinking maybe it's payback for getting their asses handed to them when they tried (and failed for once) to take credit for the closing of the Tant dog fighting ring that ended with the seizure of 52 fighting dogs and netted David Tant originally 40 years in jail...later modified by the state supreme court to 30 years. PETA really wanted that as an ad point even though they'd done no work on it at all and even tried to foist off some tapes of dog fights as being part of Tant's operation when they weren't. They might have garnered some points if they'd offered to help support the 52 dogs that had to be kept alive by our SPCA for the almost year and a half of the prosecution, making it necessary to euthanize a lot of animals that might otherwise have found homes, but they didn't. If they couldn't be credited with the whole thing, they didn't want anything to do with it.

[Critters2]

51. The abbey is not disputing the truth of the video

Just claiming that treating chickens this way is humane. Ie, lying.

[China_cat]

71. Again, I will say...I have been there. You haven't

and don't seem to want to. The monks have not seen the footage AFTER it was cut.

Now, if peta really wanted to do something other than payback for a humiliation, why didn't they go after the hunt club not 5 miles from the abbey? The one that holds canned hunts?

[Critters2]

55. He was there on retreat, and just wandered into the chicken buildings

Clearly, the monks didn't mind at the time.

[China_cat]

72. He was there FRAUDULENTLY

posing as a retreatant. Carrying a video camera and other electronic gear which retreatants are asked NOT to bring with them. No phones, no beepers, no laptops, no cameras...nothing that would interfere with the goal of the retreat.

[GoneOffShore]

13. Good post

Hope it defuses the debate here.

Those of us who are omnivores will continue to be, knowing that we do indeed eat the flesh of dead animals. And the vegans will continue to eat what they eat.

[Mend]

15. to me, it is not what people eat, it is about how we treat the

animals while they live and how we go about killing them.

[GoneOffShore]

35. Amen - and not in a religious way.

[Critters2]

50. The abbey does not dispute the veracity of the footage

They just want you to believe that what you're seeing is somehow humane. Well, keeping chickens in such close quarters is NOT humane, no matter how many monks say it is.

[flvegan]

52. That's too much logic for this thread.

Thanks, though!

[Critters2]

54. Logic, when talking to the anti-PETA people

It's like :banghead:

[karlrschneider]

56. I'm not a fan of PETA but I had to do a double-take on this linguistic spin from the monks:

"He cites the Abbey's manure recycling program, which they process and sell as a compost product called "Earth Healer," an alternative to the extremely polluting and common factory practice of spreading waste on fields..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Verily, I say unto you, from this day forward, thou shalt refer to chicken shit as "Earth Healer". Amen.

:eyes:

[Critters2]

57. LOL!! It's not what you say, it's how you say it!! nt

[flvegan]

58. Where is the "Nominate for a DUzy" button?

[NashVegas]

64. If The Abbey IS In FACT De-beaking the Hens, They Are Using Abusive Factory Farm Methods

Chickens who aren't overly-confined to close quarters aren't known for attacking each other to the point they need to be de-beaked.

[China_cat]

70. They aren't

they don't even breed their own chickens but buy the poults from a supplier where the beak trimming is done before the abbey ever gets them.

[NashVegas]

74. You Are What You Buy

And that says enough for me.

[flvegan]

11. Debeaking, intense confinement and forced molting are very common egg industry

procedures/practices.

I will say this, though...from the video on the PETA website, for a battery egg system, that place is much cleaner than what I've seen. It's still an inhumane shithole, and to suggest that these animals are treated like "God's precious creatures" is laughable. I

[EFerrari]

16. And that is why I'm a vegetarian. @ssholes on wheels

What is the MATTER with people. :nuke:

[Buzz Clik]

17. PETA. Say no more.

The day I change anything in my life to appease PETA is the day hell freezes over.

[depakid]

42. So you'd support and enable animal cruelty

just to annoy PETA?

That's the spirit....

[Warren DeMontague]

43. No. Perhaps you can tell folks under what PRECISE conditions PETA does approve of raising chickens

to eat?


...

[depakid]

46. Not cutting their beaks off might be a start....

[Warren DeMontague]

49. I'm not talking about a "start". Under what circumstances does PETA consider

raising chickens for food "ethical"?

Here, I'll answer the question: None.

[flvegan]

67. Nice work.

Making this about PETA and not the topic at hand.

[Buzz Clik]

75. What's the first word in the OP?

"PETA"

The question stands.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. These guys are obviously not Franciscans.

[Critters2]

53. They're Trappists. nt

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Another link, not behind a log-in.

http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A23747

[Mend]

27. thank you...eom

[yurbud]

24. so it's not consensual?

[Leopolds Ghost]

41. That's exactly what I was thinking when I clicked on this post.

[yurbud]

48. if it said clergy abuse expense accounts, I'd imagine them rubbing money on themselves.

[JNelson6563]

25. Be on the look-out for local eggs

We have farmers in MI who sell small quantities of eggs for a little supplemental income. I'm sure this is common everywhere. Little local sources where you can get fresh eggs from chickens that live in humane conditions. There really are still some farms out there, complete with chickens in the barnyard. Look for 'em and support them if you find 'em.

Julie

[Horse with no Name]

34. I opened this post with trepidation

fearing the worst.
I am not sure if molesting chickens is worse than what they are doing but it's definitely a close second.

[Malikshah]

36. Door's been opened....

[BlooInBloo]

39. If chickens were people, this would bother me.

EDIT: "they" -> "chickens" for clarity.

[flvegan]

60. You seem to need more compassion bandwidth.

[Critters2]

65. LOL!!!

A few more RAM of kindness!!

[flvegan]

66. You like that, huh?

Someone needs to clear their caring cache, methinks!

[barb162]

69. It's terrible. I hope they are forced to stop these cruel practices