The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and
the Futuristic Fate of Domestic Fowl

This paper was presented at "The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and Animal Patents Conference", held by The Alliance for Animals on October 12, 1996, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Others dismiss the idea that the pre-factory farming era was idyllic for birds and other animals on the farm, suggesting, rather, that factory farming is an extension of age-old attitudes and customs in regard to animals raised for food. Recalling 16th-century England, Andrew Johnson says in Factory Farming, for example, that the modern battery-cage building is little more than a greatly magnified replica of the Renaissance housewife's kitchen hen coop.1

The genetic engineering of birds and other animals to produce food and practice science can thus be seen together with factory farming mainly as either a departure from tradition or an extension of it. Proponents argue that genetic engineering is "no different in principle from what happens when new hybrids or plant varieties are created through traditional breeding techniques."2

Others say that while humans have manipulated species for millennia, biotechnology, and in particular genetic engineering, "represents a quantum leap in species manipulation."3 This viewpoint is summarized by Jeremy Rifkin in his contrast between past and future: "In all of humanity's past experience, living things enjoyed a separate, unique, and identifiable place in the order of nature. There were always rabbits and robins, oaks and ostriches, and while human beings could tinker with the surface of each, they couldn't penetrate to the interior of any. . . . The redesign of existing organisms and the engineering of wholly new ones marks a qualitative break with humanity's entire past relationship to the living world. . . . Engineering new forms of life requires a wholesale transformation of our thought patterns."4

In the past, humans manipulated birds and other animals as much as they could using tools specifically designed and otherwise available for the purpose. Historical evidence does not indicate that previous societies practiced ethical restraint in their treatment of nonhuman animals. For instance, the notion that Native Americans showed a high degree of compassion for nonhuman life is more wishful thinking than actual fact. The ritual sacrifice of chickens and other animals as an integral part of traditional religious ceremonies by many cultures throughout the world shows that the conferring of "sanctity" upon a creature is no protection against extreme cruelty towards that creature and may even be invoked as an excuse for it. Neither the past nor contemporary cultures can be taken as models for a just and compassion future with other species.

If humanity's past relationship to the living world did not include genetic engineering, this was not because of superior ethical attitudes in previous eras. Today, Western technology has materialized certain human impulses and brought together an accumulation of skills, techniques, and arguments in the service of those impulses. It enables us to do what farming, pharmacology, and business enterprise would have done long ago if it had been possible. Proponents of genetic engineering can reasonably claim that the practice is "no more than the evolution of biological methods, each new discovery spawning additional discoveries."5 This claim encompasses a moral and descriptive outlook on our relationship to other creatures. Current and traditional use of animals in agriculture excludes "standard, traditional, and customary agricultural practices," however cruel, from the meaning of cruelty.6 For example, it is customary and legal in the United States to starve hens for weeks at a time in order to manipulate egg production, until their combs turn blue, or they die.7 People may visit any animal auction in rural America where they will see furniture being treated with much more care and consideration than a calf or a baby chicken.8

The treatment of poultry in the past was cruel, even excluding cockfighting, cock-throwing (burying chickens in the ground up to their necks and stoning them to death), and other sadistic sports against birds. In Renaissance England, poultry and game-birds "were often fattened in darkness and confinement, sometimes being blinded as well. 'The cock being gelded,' it was explained, 'he is called a capon and is crammed [force fed] in a coop.' Geese were thought to put on weight if the webs of their feet were nailed to the floor; and it was the custom of some seventeenth-century housewives to cut the legs off living fowl in the belief that it made their flesh more tender.. . . . The London poulterers kept thousands of live birds in their cellars and attics . . . In 1842 Edwin Chadwick found that fowls were still being reared in town bedrooms."9

In the European Age of Enlightenment, "Turkeys were very slowly bled to death suspended upside down from the kitchen ceiling." Geese "repeatedly were plucked of their feathers while alive in order to provide writing quills."10 In London, chickens developed fevers "occasioned by the infamous practice of sewing up the gut, that they may be the sooner fattened in coops, in consequence of this cruel retention." 11 In one Italian town, a modern observer watched a buyer as she "clutched the chicken by the legs, several times unknowingly and uncaringly banged its head against the ground, weighed it while yanking it to and fro, and finally dumped it into her sack. Then she must have forgotten something, pulled the chicken out again, but only halfway, stuck its legs into the railings of a nearby fence, left it dangling undoubtedly with broken legs and walked away." 12

It is from this past history that the futuristic fate of chickens and other domestic fowl unfolds.

The Twentieth Century

The treatment of chickens, turkeys, and other domestic fowl in modern society leads logically to genetic engineering. The mechanized environment, mutilations, starvation procedures, artificial insemination, and methodology of mass-murdering billions of birds in food production and science raise many profound and unsettling questions about our society and our species. It is not only the human behavior, but the attitude, as exemplified in the following statement by a poultry scientist regarding the onset of hysteria in caged hens: "A product of man's concentration of poultry under situations of stress is the appearance of a condition known as avian hysteria. The afflicted flock's behavior is typified by extreme nervousness, often exhibited at closely spaced timed intervals with clock-like regularity. Hysteria appears to be related to the number per group and pen size. This condition, first reported in the late 1950's, is linked to man's concentration of bird numbers in conditions of total confinement." 14

By nature, chickens and turkeys are alert and nimble forest-dwellers and foragers who have been forced to subsist in alien bodies and alien environments that manifest human psychic patterns, not theirs. They are not suited to the life imposed on them in order to satisfy human wants in the modern world. Broiler chickens have been forced to grow three and a half times faster than normal chickens through dietary and genetic manipulations for meat production, resulting in painful skeletal and metabolic diseases. An example is tibial dyschondroplasia, in which the growing bird's young leg bones develop crippling fissures and fractures. Several decades ago, 1.2 percent of chickens suffered from tibial dyschondroplasia. Today 49 percent of broiler chickens--baby birds slaughtered at seven weeks old--suffer from this human-created disease. 15

Yet, a major thrust of genetic engineering is to increase the chicken's growth rate. A 1991 article in Feedstuffs entitled "Biotechnology to lead to poultry developments" notes that even though increased growth rate causes the broiler chicken to "become more prone to leg weakness, specifically tibial dyschondroplasia . . . [g]enetic potential will not be a limiting factor in the further improvement of growth rate." 16

It is from this current outlook rooted in the past that the futuristic fate of chickens and other domestic fowl proceeds.

Let us look at three primary aspects of genetic engineering of domestic fowl: the promises, the protocols, and the problems.

PROMISES

1. Completion of a chicken genetic map. "When the chicken genetic map is completed it should provide a means of selecting production traits for a variety of desires." 17 In 1993, the U.S. Department of Agriculture funded for five years the National Animal Genome Research Project. The purpose of this Project is to develop genetic maps for agriculturally important species-- "cattle, swine, sheep and poultry." The Project's headquarters for gene mapping of poultry is the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, Avian Disease and Oncology Laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan. According to one of the researchers, "The main goal of our laboratory is to decode the genetic information provided in the chicken genome. . . . Armed with this powerful tool, researchers will be able to identify and isolate regions of the chicken genome that influence production traits such as feed efficiency or disease resistance. This information could, in turn, lead to improved methods for breeding superior chickens. In addition, much of the information and technologies will be readily transferable within poultry since the genomes of other avian species such as turkeys and ducks are similar to the chicken genome." 18

   This U.S. laboratory is working with other laboratories around the world, in England, Scotland, The Netherlands, and Israel. The effort to identify economically important genes in poultry is coordinated by an International Poultry Genome Workshop that meets every two years. Commercially, as a result of large investments and expected profits, the United States also has "secrecy and confidentiality agreements which accompany an intense competitive relationship between laboratories and between countries." 19

2. Manipulation of Growth Characteristics in Poultry. Under the heading of "The Chicken Industry: New Products Promise Change," Genetic Technology News predicted in 1988 that "Recombinant products that can improve growth offer the biggest potential market for genetically engineered products." 20 Therefore, "Growth promotion will be the primary target for application of recombinant DNA techniques directly to chickens." 21 According to the forecast, use of recombinant growth hormone in genetically engineered chickens could become commercially feasible in a competitive market in the near future.

   For example, Merck & Co. (the pharmaceutical company that owns Hubbard [chicken] Farms and British United Turkeys Limited), has been doing experiments on chickens using growth hormones from cattle. In the early 1990s, Merck filed for a European patent on a "Macro Chicken," described on the patent application as a "transgenic fowl expressing bovine growth hormone." 22 At the same time, geneticists have been searching for a fat-reducing gene to insert into the germ plasm of commercial broiler chickens. This is because selection for body weight in the 20th century tripled the appetite and number of fat cells in broiler chickens so that they "became unable to synthesize protein and lean meat fast enough to keep pace with increased intake of food energy. The excess food energy was deposited as lipids, and broilers became fatter." 23 With all this in mind, genetic engineers envision a prospect of manipulating the chicken's DNA to make chickens grow larger, leaner, and faster, and of changing the shape and composition of their bodies. Never mind the chicken, for in this vision, as a biotech company president said, "I'm not sure that birds have preferences about their body shape." 24

3. Disease Resistance in Poultry. Modern poultry production has created new diseases and pathology syndromes, of which a major example is Marek's disease, an infectious immunosuppressive cancer that fills the chicken's spinal chord and peripheral nervous system with malignant tumors, resulting in paralysis, blindness, and death. It is caused by an airborne herpesvirus that localizes in the feather follicles and is sloughed through the dander and feather particles to float in the air and be inhaled by the birds in the dirty, crowded environments in which even their feathers are fatal. Marek's disease vaccines have so far succeeded only in suppressing the disease, not preventing it. In fact, a 1996 article in Broiler Industry says that "Marek's disease condemnations and mortality are on the rise, increasing with each passing year during the 1990s." 25 Considering the economic consequences of Marek's disease and other poultry epidemics, research is being done to develop vaccines using recombinant DNA technology, whereby certain large DNA viruses, such as fowl pox, can be engineered to express foreign genes such as Marek's disease genes that code for specific immunizing proteins that could protect chicken flocks against widespread infections like Marek's disease. Currently, the Avian Disease and Oncology Laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan is conducting experiments to identify and locate genes that confer resistance to Marek's disease, infecting and reproducing chickens specifically inbred for Marek's disease resistance and susceptibility, respectively. 26

   Other poultry diseases that have been targeted for genetic engineering include avian influenza, an untreatable viral disease affecting the respiratory, enteric, and nervous system of birds; and salmonella 27 (of which there are more than 2,000 strains, including a deadly new antibiotic-resistant strain in Britain--Salmonella typhimurium DT104--adding to the over 40 microbiological pathogens in animal products that are known to cause human illnesses and death). 28

4. Miscellaneous Prospects. Other future scenarios include modifying hens to lay eggs with lower cholesterol and to make in their eggs proteins from other species (foreign or heterologous proteins) for use by the pharmaceutical industry; 29 modifying broiler chickens for improved flavor; and creating chickens with flesh tailored in texture for microwave ovens. 30

5. Conservation of Genetic Resources of Stocks of Domestic Poultry. At the First International Symposium on the Artificial Insemination of Poultry (University of Maryland, College Park, June 1994), a talk was given entitled "Beyond Freezing Semen." According to the speaker from the University of Guelph in Ontario, "The ability to cryopreserve [preserve by freezing] diploid cells that can enter the germline is an essential component of programs designed to conserve genetic resources of stocks of domestic poultry." 31 Cryopreservation of cells and tissues from chickens and other avian species could theoretically provide a convenient stock of genetic resources from which specific poultry genotypes could be recovered. The speaker described a particular experiment in which unincubated fresh and frozen blastodermal cells (tiny reproductive cells from which the embryo develops) from Barred Rock chicken embryos were injected into 235 and 398 unincubated recipient White Leghorn chicken embryos, respectively. The idea was to see whether and to what extent a certain plumage characteristic of the donor chickens showed up in the recipient chickens and their offspring, as a way of testing the effects of freezing and thawing blastodermal cells on germline transmission.

   Although no evidence for the incorporation of previously frozen blastodermal cells into the germline was obtained, and although the majority of the 633 embryos died in the shell--only 21 birds hatched--the researchers concluded that "The presence of donor-derived somatic tissues in chimeras produced by injecting blastodermal cells that have been frozen and thawed implies that a genetic conservation program could be created using cryopreserved cells from unincubated embryos."32

PROTOCOLS

The above example of freezing and thawing of embryonic cells removed from one group of birds and inserted into another gives an idea of the laboratory methods that are being used to manipulate chickens genetically and to test various hypotheses. A major current effort focuses on overcoming the inaccessibility of the fertilized ova in birds. 34 In mammals, such as mice, the fertilized ova are relatively easy to obtain in large numbers and they have visible pronuclei for DNA microinjection. However, a hen generates only one fertilized ovum per day. This ovum, the yolk, is large and fragile. Its cytoplasm makes the pronuclei impossible to visualize for DNA microinjection. By the time the egg is laid the embryo has already begun to develop on the yolk and has about 60,000 cells. Research protocols seek to overcome these obstacles. Some examples follow.

1. In the mid-1980s, a researcher at the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research in Edinburgh injected foreign DNA into single-cell embryos and then cultured them through hatching in vitro. The embryo was removed from the oviduct of the hen, placed in various vessels containing solutions similar to those in an egg, then placed in an artificially prepared eggshell sealed with glue made from albumen and antibiotics, and artificially incubated through hatching. New Scientist hailed this as "The world's first test-tube chickens [opening] the way for researchers to create 'super-chicken' by inserting foreign DNA into chick embryos." 35

2. In 1993, Poultry Science published an article describing a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study of the potential of the avian liver to express (i.e. manifest a trait caused by a particular gene) recombinant proteins in vivo. The research was designed to estimate use of the avian liver "to influence growth rates, metabolism, body fat composition, and the effectiveness of various drugs" and be a model for treatment of human genetic diseases. 36 In the experiment, avian leukosis retroviral vectors were used to introduce a recombinant rat neomycin-resistance gene into chicken embryos both before and during incubation. Upon hatching the surviving chicks were killed by cervical dislocation (neck-breaking) and their tissues were frozen in liquid nitrogen for further analysis.

3. In 1994, an article in Bio/Technology described a method of producing transgenic chickens based on microinjection of DNA into the germinal disc of chick zygotes followed by ex vivo embryo culture. Eggs used in the study came from 30-40 week-old Euribrid Hi-Sex hens, "a layer strain chosen for hatchability and docility." 37 The hens were artificially inseminated weekly with pooled semen from cockerels (young roosters) of the same strain. The hens were then killed by intravenous injection of an anesthetic overdose of Expiral, and their abdomens were opened and the oviduct section containing the shell-less egg was removed. The eggs were placed in a surrogate shell and DNA was injected into the cytoplasm of the germinal disc of the zygotes. The shell was then filled with a culture medium and sealed shut. The fate of plasmid DNA microinjected into the germinal disc of zygotes was analyzed in embryos that survived for at least 12 days in culture. Of the 128 original ova, seven chicks survived to sexual maturity. Of these, one rooster transmitted the DNA to 3.4 percent of his offspring. Of these offspring, those who survived to sexual maturity have been bred to produce transgenic offspring, "demonstrating that stable transmission of foreign DNA can be obtained by our method." 38

4. The aim of a study published in the November 1995 issue of Transgenic Research was "to develop a safe retroviral system to obtain transgenic chickens." 39 The problem being addressed is the fact that replicating avian retroviruses used in vivo can be pathogenic even after a long time, increasing the risk of disease states associated with chronic viral infection. As the avian spleen necrosis virus (SNV) is closely related to mammalian retroviruses, and it has been found that SNV can infect human cells, the researcher claim they sought, and have developed, a way to produce transgenic chickens using replication defective vectors based on a system (an "ecotropic" system) which is able to infect avian cells only.

   Using vectors derived from ecotropic avian leukosis viruses, the researchers microinjected foreign genes (a neomycin- resistance gene and certain type of bacterial gene) into the subgerminal cavity of unincubated chicken embryo blastoderms. DNA was then extracted from these embryos and injected into another group of unincubated chicken embryos. Of the group of 1550 chicken embryos infected with the ecotropic vectors, only 36 hatched. According to the researchers, most died early after injection due mainly to their opening the eggshells. One surviving rooster managed to transmit vector DNA to his progeny, at a rate of 2.2 percent. The researchers concluded that the data presented in their report demonstrated "the efficacy of ecotropic avian retroviral vectors to produce transgenic chickens." 40

PROBLEMS

1. Only a proportion of the blastodermal cells that are injected into the inner cell mass of recipient embryos are precursors of the germline. To date, these primordial germ cells--cells that are uniquely destined for the germline--cannot be identified until the embryo has been incubated for about 18 hours and has already begun to develop. 41

2. The developmental capabilities of cells contained within an unincubated blastoderm are poorly understood. Consequently, the relationship between somatic chimerism (appearance of foreign-gene characteristics in the immediate recipient) and germline chimerism (genetic transmission of those characteristics to subsequent generations) cannot be predicted. 42 Birds who do show evidence of donor contribution to somatic tissues (e.g., feather pigmentation) seldom or erratically transmit this contribution to their offspring. Somatic chimeras do not guarantee germline chimeras, and the incorporation and persistence of injected DNA in the chick zygote is poor: it may occur in some or none of the cells of the recipient bird. For example, a 1993 article in Poultry Science noted that the appearance of donor-derived feather pigmentation cells in experimental chimeric chickens did not correlate with donor- derived spermatozoa in the semen of these birds. 43

3. Chicken growth hormone "has not shown the dramatic effectiveness of the corresponding recombinant hormones in increasing milk output of cows or lean meat in hogs." 44 The regulatory growth mechanisms in birds are poorly understood, as shown above, and may require the use of several different hormones to produce the desired growth characteristic at the right time and place of development.

4. "Problems with transgenic farm animals abound," 45 including undesirable "side effects": high death rate, short life span, biological weakness, and pathology syndromes. For example, chickens infected with a retroviral transgene at the USDA's Avian Disease and Oncology Laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan developed lymphoid leukosis, "apparently from recombination between the transgene and endogenous viruses." 46

5. Blastodermal cells "are compromised as they are frozen and thawed." 47 The number of somatic chimeras (in this case, chicks with donor-derived plumage and feather pigmentation) that resulted when fresh blastodermal donor cells were injected into recipient cells was vastly reduced when the donor cells had been frozen and thawed prior to injection into recipient cells. Moreover, the germline chimeras dropped from 25 percent of the somatic chimeras produced with fresh cells, "to 0 out of the nine chimeras from frozen-thawed cells." 48 In 1994, researchers concluded that the production of germline chimeras from frozen-thawed blastodermal cells had yet to be demonstrated. 49

6. Other problems cited by genetic engineers include "long laborious breeding programs, and an uncertain future with regulatory agencies, animal rights advocates, and consumers." 50

Ethical Considerations and the Futuristic Fate of Domestic Fowl

Animals used in genetic engineering are further degraded in not even being recognized as whole beings but only insofar as they embody a certain DNA sequence, genetic resource, model system, production trait, or body part. A poultry scientist told his colleagues at a recent convention, "We are no longer selling broilers, we are selling pieces. A knowledge of how broilers of different strains and sexes grow and become pieces is increasingly important." 52

However, the reduction of chickens and other animals to model systems of disease and food production traits is not new. In science, for example, researchers have nursed highly inbred flocks of chickens over many decades. Bizarre pathological symptoms and conditions that necessarily arise over time in these inbred flocks are then specifically "selected for" by the researchers, who will then claim to have created a "model" that resembles some disease pattern or other such as multiple sclerosis in humans or heart attack syndromes in commercially-bred chickens.53 In agriculture, as is summarized in a book entitled Domestic Animal Production, the fitness of an animal has historically been determined by whether the animal pleased its owner enough to be allowed to survive to maturity and reproduce. 54

Genetic engineering carries these attitudes and practices technically further, but does not break moral continuity with a past in which nonhuman animals have repeatedly been denied possession of a soul, reason, or some other vaunted human quality, and used without apology. Nor, in terms of cruelty and rationalization, does genetic engineering break continuity with a past in which nonhuman animals have had the misfortune to be included in a "sacred" circle and accordingly scapegoated and otherwise sacrificed for humans begging their forgiveness.

Today, the environmental movement--to give an example--has carried forth this division by conferring a relatively high and "respectful" status on so-called wild animals, who may then be hunted and otherwise "honored," within a spiritualized ecological framework. In contrast, so-called domesticated animals, most especially the agriculturally-domesticated species, have been castigated for the crime of allowing themselves to be domesticated, whereby they placed themselves outside the circle of moral consideration. Farm animals have, in effect, been blamed for allowing themselves to be turned into "genetic freaks" and degenerate parodies of nature. Factory-farm animals have been further denounced for messing up the natural environment with their mounds of dead bodies and manure, unsightliness, and pollution. 55 Environmentalists and animal rights advocates agree that large-scale, intensive animal agriculture is ecologically inefficient and unseemly, and ethically obscene. The United States poultry industry pollutes fields and streams with 14 billion pounds of manure and 28 billion gallons of waste water each year. 56 A one million hen complex produces 125 tons of wet manure a day. 57 This is detestable, but it is not the chickens' fault. It is ours.

Farm animals have been morally abandoned by our culture and treated with greater contempt and neglect than all other classes of animals, even by their so-called "defenders." They have been generally dismissed as beyond the pale of equal, or even any, moral concern, although, morally, we owe not less, but more, to those beings whose birthrights and earthrights we have so thoroughly stripped away. Poultry constitute the enormous bulk of this lumpen mass of farm animals. They are the 95 percent of the 95 percent of our victims, who have now joined, and been joined by, the genetically-engineered animals. 58

In Algeny, Jeremy Rifkin wrote that in a genetically-engineered world, "if only one living creature were left unscathed . . . we would reach out to it, embrace it, touch it, marvel at it, with a peak of emotion that all the replicas together could not possibly hope to tap in us. For we experience something special with that creature that can never be experienced with the products of our own technological handiwork." 59

Although touching in a way, this line of thought is unfortunate because it suggests that the animals violated by genetic engineers are not only mere manufactures of ours but inferior aliens and sullied virgins. It implies that the suffering of a genetically-engineered hen, for example, is somehow less real, intimate, moving, and important, more "inanimate" and beyond our empathy and moral accountability, than the sufferings we impose on a "normal" hen. It invites us to glide evilly into the mentality of the genetic engineer who told a symposium regarding the birds who hatch in his laboratory with no sign of the desired change: "We simply throw them away." 60

I believe that chickens and other domestic fowl do not have a future worth living in their encounter with the human species and that genetic engineering furthers a drive in our species to eliminate not only diversity and autonomy, but joy and happiness in other creatures. 61 I think it is essentially true, as someone wrote, that "If there's anything to reincarnation and a recycling of souls, with the decreasing biodiversity on this planet and daily loss of endangered species, the only place one will be able to go if they get recycled into another lifetime is into another human or a farm animal." 62 This, in part, expresses the futuristic fate of domestic fowl, a fate that is much worse than extinction. Karen Davis

References and Notes

1. Andrew Johnson, Factory Farming (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 23.
2. Malcolm Gladwell, "Biotech Food Products Won't Require Special Rules, FDA Decides," The Washington Post May 26, 1992: A4.
3. Robin Mather, "Fowl Play," The Detroit News July 6, 1993: 1D-2D. See 2D.
4. Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), 18.
5. R.L. Witter, "Biotechnology: where are we and what lies ahead?" Poultry Digest Feb. 1993: 34-39. See p. 34.
6. See, e.g., Consortium Executive Committee, Guide for the Care and Use of Agricultural Animals in Agricultural Research and Teaching, 1st ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, March 1988), 5, 7. See also Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 26-27, 31-32. For a concise overview of this problem in regard to farm animals, see David J. Wolfson, Beyond the Law: Agribusiness and the Systemic Abuse of Animals Raised for Food or Food Production (New York: Archimedian Press, 1996). For a free copy, contact Animal Rights International, P.O. Box 214, Planetarium Station, New York, NY 10024.
7. In the United States, commercial laying hens, including so-called "free-range" hens, are starved--force molted--for a average of 10 days straight, "until their combs turn blue" or they die (see e.g., Journal of Applied Poultry Research 2 [1993]: 107). The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture publishes monthly forced molting statistics in Chickens and Eggs (Washington, D.C.: National Agricultural Statistics Service). At any given time, at least 7 million egg-type hens are being legally starved-- force molted--in this country. In 1987, Britain passed a law against depriving hens of food and water for more than 24 hours, though I know of no data concerning the law's effect on the practice of forced molting in Britain.
8. See "In the Onion Sack, On the Auction Block: Poultry at Auctions," PoultryPress 3.3 (Summer 1993): 4-5. PoultryPress is the quarterly Newsletter of United Poultry Concerns, P.O. Box 59367, Potomac, MD 20859.
9. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 94-95.
10. Richard D. Ryder, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 67.
11. Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Lewis M. Knapp (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 121.
12. Mark Mathew Braunstein, Radical Vegetarianism, Revised ed. (Quaker Hill, CT: Panacea Press, 1993), 93-94.
13. "Gordon Johnson Remembers," Broiler Industry July 1976: 119.
14. W.O. Wilson, "Housing," American Poultry History 1823-1973, ed. John Skinner (Madison, WI: American Printing & Publishing, 1974), 234.
15. Roland M. Leach Jr., "Poultry industry should reconsider if bigger is better," Feedstuffs Aug. 26, 1996: 10.
16. Robert H. Brown, "Biotechnology to lead to poultry developments," Feedstuffs May 13, 1991: 35.
17. Hans H. Cheng, "The chicken genetic map: a tool for the future," Poultry Digest June 1994: 24-28. See p. 24.
18. Cheng, 24.
19. Witter, 34. See note 5 above.
20. "The Chicken Industry: New Products Promise Change," Genetic Technology News 8.8 (Aug. 1988): 8, 11. See p. 8.
21. Ibid., 11.
22. Mather, 1D.
23. Roy Gyles, "Technological Options for Improving the Nutritional Value of Poultry Products," Designing Foods: Animal Product Options in the Marketplace (Washington, D.C.: 1988), 299.
24. Mather, 2D.
25. Sharon Heins Miller, "Increased Marek's Condemnations . . . New Strains or Old Problems?" Broiler Industry May 1996: 26-31. See p. 30.
26. Cheng, 27.
27. Mather, 2D.
28. "Foodborne illness costs $5.6 to $9.4 billion annually," Egg Industry Aug. 1996: n.p.; Ian Elliott, "Drug-resistant salmonella worries British," Feedstuffs May 20, 1996: 5.
29. "The Chicken Industry," 8, 11 (see note 20 above); Helen Sang, "Transgenic chickens - methods and potential applications," TibTech 12 (1994): 415-420. See p. 415.
30. "The Chicken Industry," 8; Kathleen Hart, "Making Mythical Monsters," The Progressive March 1990: 22.
31. S.E. Reedy et al., "Beyond Freezing Semen," Proceedings: First International Symposium on the Artificial Insemination of Poultry, ed. M.R. Bakst and G.J. Wishart (Savoy, IL: The Poultry Science Association, 1995), 251-261. See p. 251.
32. Reedy, 257.
33. "Test-tube chicks pave way for 'super-animals,'" New Scientist Feb. 4, 1988: 36.
34. Jamie Love et al., "Transgenic Birds by DNA Microinjection," Bio/Technology Jan. 12, 1994: 60-63. See p. 60. See also P. Thoraval et al., "Germline transmission of exogenous genes in chickens using helper- free ecotropic avian leukosis virus-based vectors," Transgenic Research 4 (1995): 369-376. See p. 369.
35. "Test-tube chicks." See note 33 above.
36. R.F. Cook et al., "Liver-Specific Expression of a Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase-neo Gene in Genetically Modified Chickens," Poultry Science 72 (1993): 554-567. See pp. 554-555.
37. Love, 62. See note 34 above.
38. Ibid., 60. The number of this rooster's surviving offspring and of those who survived to sexual maturity are not mentioned in the report.
39. Thoraval, 374. See note 34 above.
40. Ibid., 375.
41. Reedy, 258-259. See note 31 above.
42. Ibid., 258.
43. R.J. Etches, "Chimeric Chickens and Their Use in Manipulation of the Chicken Genome," Poultry Science 72 (1993): 882-889.
44. "The Chicken Industry," 11. See note 20 above.
45. Witter, 38. See note 5 above.
46. Ibid.
47. Reedy, 258.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Witter, 38.
51. Andrew Kimbrell, "Facing the Future: Genetic Engineering," The Animals' Agenda 15.1 (1995): 24-28.
52. William A. Dudley-Cash, "Latest research findings reported at annual poultry science meeting," Feedstuffs Sept. 7, 1992: 11.
53. Karen Davis, "The Use of Poultry in Biomedical Research," The AV Magazine (The Journal of The American Anti-Vivisection Society) Nov. 1991: 6-10.
54. James V. Craig, Domestic Animal Behavior: Causes and Implications for Animal Care and Management (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 27.
55. See, e.g., J. Baird Callicott, "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," Environmental Ethics 2: 311-338. I discuss these issues in detail in "Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection," Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, ed. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 1995), 192-212.
56. Denise Giardina and Eric Bates, "Fowling the Nest," Southern Exposure 19.2: 8-12. See p. 8.
57. Donald D. Bell, "An egg industry perspective: Ready for the 21st century?" Poultry Digest Jan. 1999: 26. I confirmed this information in a phone call to Bell, April 16, 1996.
58. See, e.g.,Henry Spira, "How Are We Doing?" The Animals' Agenda Sept./ Oct. 1996: 35. "With regard to the 95% of animal suffering [the suffering of farm animals], things are actually getting worse." Reported U.S. slaughter figures for 1995: 35.7 million cattle; 1.43 million calves; 96.3 million pigs; 4.56 million sheep and lambs; 7,371,429 young broiler-fryer-roaster chickens; 159,418 mature chickens (breeders and layers); 19,528 ducks; and 281,032 turkeys. Livestock Slaughter: 1995 Summary Washington, D.C.: National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, March 1996: 1; and Poultry Slaughter, Washington, D.C.: NASS, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, April 4, 1996: 15-16. As many chickens are slaughtered per day as cattle are slaughtered in a year in this country.
59. Rifkin, 252-253. See note 4 above.
60. Robert Etches (Dept. of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph, Ontario) said this during his talk on June 19, on "Beyond Freezing Semen" at the First International Symposium on the Artificial Insemination of Poultry at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, June 17-19, 1994. In his article he says, "Any chick that hatched from an injected recipient but showed no evidence of somatic chimerism would be eliminated" from the program (259). See note 31 above.
61. The term "domesticated fowl" is problematic, as chickens and other birds so designated can become feral again, given a chance. Their "domestication" is more superficial than fundamental. See, e.g., Michael W. Fox, "Animal Freedom and Well-Being: Want or Need," Applied Animal Ethology 11 (1983/1984): 205-209; and Lesley J. Rogers, The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken (Wallingford, Oxon UK; Tucson, AZ USA: CAB INTERNATIONAL, 1995), 213-221. In the U.S.and U.K., investors are lobbying the government to reclassify exotic wild birds such as ostriches and emus as "livestock" for agricultural use. Wild and feral birds are not safe from human clutches, as described in George F. Gee, "Artificial Insemination and Cryopreservation of Semen from Nondomestic Birds," Proceedings: First International Symposium on the Artificial Insemination of Poultry, 262-279. See note 31 above.
62. Jack Rudloe, letter to the author, April 28, 1996.

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