Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Factory raised poultry is under the lens again. Now of course this is USA based, but if it's going on there, it's here.

In their feed is high levels of arsenic (makes the flesh appear pink) an antihistamine found in benedryl, coffee pulp, keep them awake some they eat more, Prozac to keep them calm, banned antibiotics which apparently is the real big concern. Umm, I think lying, dishonesty and hiding ILLEGAL ingredients is the real frigging concern.

Farmers are claiming to not know what is in the feed and that they expect the feed companies to abide by laws and regulations. (hahahahahahaha) ok.
So if the farmers don't know, clearly the feed companies are being told to add these items? By who? The poultry association? Keep the farmers in the dark?

How many bags of feed have full disclosure on them?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/opini ... h_20120405

http://www.treehugger.com/health/chicke ... ledge.html

Why am I not surprised?

What? Who kidnapped Bert? That's all you have to say? Disappointed.

The only thing that makes any sense in there is the arsenic, and that could have come from the drinking water. Well, so could the rest of it if it was untreated municipal water LOL. Benedryl to make them sleepy, and caffeine to wake them up?? Makes no sense, especially not financial sense. Meat chickens getting anxious and tough? Meat chickens are too stupid to get anxious. They will hide from a predator and forget it's out there in 20 seconds flat, and saunter on out, mind already on the next meal. Meat chickens need encouragement to eat more? Not bloody likely, and If they had encouragement, they'd be dead by 3 weeks old. Either there's something else going on there, or poultry science 101 is failing it's students very miserably.

It costs money to dispose of antibiotics and other chemicals. I'm more than confident the pharmaceutical companies have approached the feed companies, and as it says, you farm meat chickens even egg chickens you are REQUIRED to use proprietary feed. You don't choose. I suspect you also don't question. Feed gets delivered, you get an invoice. Done.

Also, chickens kept in these conditions are known to get sick and not survive, antibotics hidden in the feed is a simple solution to a high loss rate. Antibotics also have shown to increase growth rate and I think they grow faster with antibiotics..

So it's a poultry science failure then, and clearly the people formulating the feed have never raised broilers. The only thing you need to do to encourage them to eat more is keep a light on so they can see in the dark. Do that and you'll be lucky if half of them make it to slaughter alive...and here in Ontario at least, if a bird ha's gone off both legs, the carcass is condemned, so between heart damage and leg damage you'd really be shooting yourself in the foot to add anything to their feed to make them eat/absorb more food. Meat chickens are essentially bred to have the poultry equivalent of Prader-Willi syndrome, and in a factory farm environment with free access to feed and no reason to move around, losses due to problems caused by over eating are very high. Adding stuff to their feed to theoretically make digestive system absorb more nutrients is a stupid idea, and no amount of antibiotics will prevent or fix heart failure or joint damage.
Prozac in (Chinese) chicken?? Worse idea even than the fluoroquinolone, which is a pretty bad idea. If enough of that stuff makes it into the meat to affect human brain chemistry, no amount of Viagra or tiger penis will fix the drop in libido that will happen... and while I personally think a huge human birth rate/population drop might be a good thing, no sense taking all the fun out and screwing up your brain in the process. Wait a minute...maybe the pharmaceutical companies are trying to turn US into meat chickens--stupid, complacent, brain damaged, just sit around eating garbage and getting fatter. Although I think most of humankind is already doing a pretty good job of that all on their own in this instant gratification age. While looking for somewhere, anywhere to point fingers.

I wouldn't be surprised to heat that all of those things are in the water the chickens (and maybe the people) are drinking. I haven't heard of any water treatment plant that removes all kinds of chemicals.

I remember reading about arsenic in USA white rice. I didn't give it much though and continued to buy cheap white rice because I felt it was all I could afford. I had left the rice bag open on the counter one day and a bunch of ants got into it. I was pretty upset, one that I had ants and two that I had wasted a bag of rice. I went to dispose of the ant infested rice a short time later and all the ants where dead in the bag. The food I had bought to fed my children worked better at killing ants then the ant bait I bought. That was the moment I became afraid to trust our current food supply and I do everything I can to grow my own food for my family and my critters. If I could figure out how to grow my own hydro I'd be all set :)

Maximus wrote:QR_BBPOST What? Who kidnapped Bert? That's all you have to say? Disappointed.

Sometimes less is more.

You can get "compassion fatigue" from seeing too many charity needs or commercials.

I guess I have "outrage fatigue".

If yu look hard enough you can find anything in writing . Truth from the fiction is hardest to pick out . Luck