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The bird that flew
C.K. MEENA
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While vegetarianism isn't an option, modern poultry and cattle farming have enough horrors to disturb the strongest minds
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PACK MENTALITY Live creatures are being mass-produced like nails or plastic buckets and reared in conditions resembling concentration camps PHOTO: REUTERS
A cow leaned out of her pen, begging me to stroke her face. Clearly, she was used to being petted and made much of. Her proud owner had polished her coat and adorned her horns and neck with beads and bells. All around were dozens of other bovine beauties bursting with good health, hoping to please the judges and win a blue ribbon at the contest.
This was the national livestock and poultry exhibition held in the city a few years ago on the grounds beside NGEF. Surely, it was nostalgia that drew many Bangaloreans like me to the venue, where we feasted our eyes on birds and animals of famous local breeds from different States. Other days would have found me feasting on the whole lot in a different fashion, but that day I was lost in recollections of childhood vacations to village homes. The other visitors, too, must have had grandparents who had reared hens and goats in the backyard and lovingly named their favourite ones. One of my aunts had a pet goat called Vishalakshi. I also knew of a rooster who unfailingly answered to the name Sankaran.
Farm, farmer, farming — the words have changed meaning. Forget hens strutting about all day and pecking at the occasional worm; goats chewing fallen leaves and ejecting black pellets at random; cows stamping their feet and snorting gently as they slurp their oilcake fodder. Backyard farmers are an endangered tribe. Farms are factories now, and farming, a manufacturing industry.
At a book fair I leafed through a book for toddlers describing the daily routine of Farmer Jack or some such stalwart of the American countryside. In the morning he milks the cows, I read. There was a picture of several milking machines with their tubes attached to dozens of pink udders. No, I don't think Farmer Jack calls his pet cows Sally or Joan. In fact, I don't think he can tell them apart. He is a modern farmer. Or is he? Actually, he has become an anachronism because individual farmers have been squeezed out of the business in the U.S. Corporations run cattle farms of breathtaking proportions to feed a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Now, I'm no vegetarian. "I eat anything that moves," I'm fond of boasting. Give me any snake, grub or worm — properly seasoned, of course — and I'll dig in with gusto. But it disturbs me that live creatures are being mass-produced like nails or plastic buckets, and reared in conditions that resemble concentration camps. I once saw a TV documentary shot on a poultry farm somewhere in south India. Each bird stood in a tiny wire cage. Light bulbs burned constantly so that it would sleep less and eat more. It could move no part of its body except its head — that too, only forward, to eat and drink from the container placed directly in front of it. Part of its beak had been sliced off with a hot blade so that it would not, in frustration, peck its neighbours.
These were not living creatures but automatons. These were not the hens that my cousins and I had chased in childhood, the sturdy brown birds that would race ahead of us with loud squawks and elude grabbing hands. Some would fly up to the wooden rafters of the ceiling to take an afternoon nap. When dusk fell they would allow themselves to be trapped under large bamboo baskets in batches of four or five for a good night's rest. Occasionally, a young cock would be killed so that we could feast on biriyani.
"Romantic nonsense," you might say. "If you're so bothered about mass production, buy free-range chicken or turn vegetarian." That's a sound argument. The film on poultry farming unnerved me but did not trigger abstinence. My crippled excuse is that free-range chicken is rarely found in the market, and factory farming has become inevitable. The world eats 20 billion chickens a year. Indians are eating more chicken more frequently than ever before, and they all seem to prefer the softness of the broiler to the muscular meat of the free-roaming naati bird.
The bird that roams the backyard is less susceptible to disease than the bird cooped up in a cage. Chickens on poultry farms are shot full of antibiotics to prevent disease. Overuse of antibiotics sometimes gives rise to mutant and virulent strains of disease, as we have seen among human beings. But factory farming cannot be wished away, so all we can ask for is that animals not be Abu Ghraib-ed.
Although I'm not an animal rights activist I see a lot of sense in the standards that Britain has laid down for the welfare of farm animals and birds. They are called the Five Freedoms: freedom from fear and distress; freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury and disease; and freedom to express normal behaviour.
Sounds like a U.N. charter? Don't snigger. I too once scoffed at the phrase "ethical treatment of farm animals". Why pretend to be concerned about a creature that's going to die anyway? Hypocrisy, I thought. But now I'm not so sure. Man or beast, torture is just not on.
Perhaps I'll turn vegetarian. But the flesh is weak, alas. I know I'll just chicken out in the end.
Send your feedback to ckmeena@gmail.com
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