• Live fast, die fat SEP 28, 2010

    • To live fast and die fat could easily be the new tagline for today’s Western lifestyle. Afterall, more and more people are becoming obese.

      But this blog entry is not about the growing problem of obesity. At least not directly. No, this is about a place where “living fast and dying fat” is a carefully planned goal.

      Can you guess what this place is? (video after the break).

      The chicken farm

      When you go to the grocery store to buy chicken, chances are that the packaging will show a picture of an idyllic small farm among green fields under an open blue sky.

      But the chicken probably never even saw any sunlight in its 40 days short life, and the farm on the packaging is probably not even real.

      It’s just “clever” marketing designed to sell,… and decieve.

      Factory farming

      Most chickens are brought up at factory farms – in packs numbering tens of thousands at a time.

      In the quest for efficiency, a chicken destined for eating is now raised and slaughtered in half the time as it was 50 years ago. But not only that. Today, the chicken is also twice as big.

      If humans grew as fast as the chicken, we would weigh 160 kilos by age 2.

      No wonder chickens can’t keep up with their own weight. Many die of starvation and thirst because they can’t reach the food and water dispensers. Millions die because their organs cannot support their bodies anymore.

      This video is from the movie “Food Inc.”

      Cheap chickens

      Factory farming of chickens has been very successful in producing a lot of food, using a small amount of land, and at very affordable prices.

      Every year more than 50 billion chickens are raised worldwide.

      But the production process is not without consequences. In the European Union, for example, about 500,000 chickens die every single day because of starvation, heart failures, diseases, and other causes – a good view into our deranged consumer society.

      Free range and organic chickens are raised under far less distress. They are more expensive, but for very good reasons.

      See the links below for a longer video on how chickens are farmed.

      Links