Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the birds to move — or for human error. They're also worried that massive egg recalls
of factory farm products that have sickened millions of people will become the norm,
further casting a shadow over the poultry industry. I have witnessed firsthand the weak-
ness of representatives of animal families raised in relatively germ-free environments
for 30 to 40 years and then reintroduced to the outside world. They do not survive. To
me, it's scary to think that we might someday might need a sterile environment simply
to produce eggs and meat.
Large-scale producers are fearful that smalltimers allow their birds to harbor diseases
that will wipe out their birds. It's true that birds roaming “free range” around a yard
or pasture are exposed to worm eggs from the ground, parasites, and disease from wild
birds. It's also true that birds confined to a structure only at night may be subject to at-
tacks from possible predators. But if we isolate a species and prevent its exposure to
nature, then we don't allow it to gradually develop immunity to the earth's environment-
al and pathogenic changes.
People must decide for themselves if creating machinelike, egg-producing birds in
an unnatural agri-factory is the best raising practice. I take the position that the poultry
is much happier and more content — and thus given a humane and fulfilling existence
— when allowed to range, pick up fresh grass and bugs, and dig and scratch in the dirt.
Yes, they can and will get worms, lice, and mites, and they are exposed to diseases, but
that is how they've been raised for thousands of years, and how they have
survived
as a
collective species.
The backyard raiser may never be able to change the practices of mass-producing
conventional farms of today, but I hope both groups can at least coexist and accept that
the other's way of doing things meets that particular group's needs.
POULTRY PEOPLE
Mike and Annalisa, Los Angeles County, California
M
IKE AND ANNALISA
typify the modern food-aware and ecologically conscious fam-
ily, as they raise fowl on an acre lot within the city limits of a small city in a very
urban part of the world. They are helping to conserve our genetic resources, feed-
ing their family, and conducting valuable feed research, all in the confines of a small
backyard environment.
With no real rural countryside, they make the best use of their yard to raise and
perpetuate poultry. They work hard to raise as much of their poultry's feed as they
can, incorporating garden produce, scraps, and extra items such as avocados, persim-
mons, melons, and even bananas into the diet of their chickens. Annalisa is commit-
