Photo credit: Mickey Z.
Mickey Z. -- World News Trust
Sept. 20, 2013
“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”
- GB Shaw
Only a delusional, superficial, and speciesist society could spawn -- and accept -- this Sept. 16, 2013, New York Times headline: “In Pursuit of Tastier Chickens, a Strict Diet of Four-Star Scraps.”
Some Corporate Media Lessons:
The value of a sentient being is based upon how some humans judge its taste when cooked.
Diets are an acceptable -- even admirable -- way of eating.
“Strict” diets, of course, are best.
The quality of food is often based upon how much elites are willing to spend on it.
Times reporter (sic) Jeff Gordinier wastes no time in reinforcing centuries of conditioning. His opening sentence: “They may be the most pampered chickens on the planet.”
A new definition of “pampered” indeed: Living creatures confined and bred for the sole purpose of being murdered because some humans think they're “tasty.”
For those readers possibly wondering about his word usage, Gordinier deftly drives home the deception by telling us about the chickens' “quiet, spacious coop” on which they are treated like “two-legged aristocrats.”
We are then introduced to Ariane Daguin, “the pioneering businesswoman” who is behind the “experiment” of rediscovering “what a chicken should taste like.”
Here's her heinous resume:
Ms. Daguin, the French-born founder and chief executive of D’Artagnan, a company that has played a major role in bringing ingredients like foie gras, game birds and Berkshire pork into the broader American marketplace, said that it was not a stunt, but part of a continuing mission to change the world by changing its palates.
Daguin's omnicidal “mission” was inspired, we're told, by the taste of “mass-produced American chicken” -- something she deems a “crime.”
Please allow me to expose one example of the actual crimes perpetrated upon chickens:
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Right on cue, Gordinier explains that Michael Anthony, a chef at Gramercy Tavern, sees Daguin's experiment as “supporting a fresh but old-school alternative to factory farming.”
“We know the horror of the caged birds,” Anthony told the Times but Gordinier is careful to remind us: “Ultimately, it comes down to taste.”
Well, kinda, sorta...
What it really comes down to (as usual) is manipulating the tastes of certain agenda-setting humans and exploiting these trends to program the masses.
“D’Artagnan poured more than $250,000 into research and start-up costs,” writes Gordinier. “Using the expensive hatchlings of a heritage crossbreed, and feeding them for longer than usual, has more than doubled the normal cost of raising chickens.”
Translation: None of the players in this brutal game give a shit about the chickens. It's all about wealthy individuals paying exorbitant prices for meals in an attempt to out-do each other and clear their conscience about the hidden ingredient of cruelty. Chef David Burke calls it “a weird competition… It’s like, ‘My chicken eats better than yours.'”
Near the end of the article, Gordinier slips in a minor dose of reality -- but couches it in confusing qualifiers: “No matter what they eat, all these one-percenters of the poultry realm will meet the same fate. After 60 days, almost double the life span of a regular commercial bird, they’ll be trucked off to be slaughtered and air-chilled.”
“Trucked off to be slaughtered and air-chilled.”
All the quotes from overpaid chefs and outraged gourmets, all the faux concern for “caged birds,” and all the clever euphemisms won't alter the hideous truth.
Humane killing, free range, grass-fed, happy meat, organic meat, and so on. To the ever-growing list of deceptions designed to obfuscate the savagery we can now add this new approach of “pampered” chickens. But the harsh and ecocidal realities of speciesism will reign and ultimately take us down unless each of us hears and processes the ugly facts.
As John Robbins explains: “Animals do not ‘give’ their life to us, as the sugar-coated lie would have it. No, we take their lives. They struggle and fight to the last breath, just as we would do if we were in their place.”
You can’t have it both ways, comrades, and complacent = complicit. The time is long overdue to decide: Which side are you on?
To help you decide:
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Surrender the privilege of speciesism, embrace empathy for all sentient beings, and allow revolutionary compassion to guide your choices.
All of our grievances -- and our solutions -- are connected…
#shifthappens
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Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.
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