“If you think it’s the welfare of the individual animal
that really matters here . . . then it would be more humane
to have these blind chickens.” — Philosophy
professor and director of Purdue University’s Center for
Food Animal Productivity and Well-Being, Paul Thompson,
speaking at a National Academy of Sciences meeting on genetically
modified animals, parts of which meeting were aired on the
National Public Radio program, NPR Morning Edition,
December 4, 2001.
On December 4, 2001, National Public Radio’s Morning
Edition aired some of the issues raised at a recent
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) meeting on genetically
modified animals (Engineered Animals). The U.S. government
had asked the academy to study what the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) should consider
in permitting genetically modified meat and fish to be sold
in grocery stores. So far, the USDA says, “[i]f it looks like
a cow, smells like a cow, it is a cow, and you can eat it.”
In 1994, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
issued Points to Consider in the Food Safety Evaluation of
Transgenic Animals from Transgenic Animal Research. In this
document the Department reiterated its 1986 and 1991 “intention
to regulate foods produced by new methods, such as recombinant
DNA techniques, within the existing regulations” (p. 1). On
September 26, 2002, the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine
(CVM) and the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology cosponsored
a symposium on Animal Cloning and the Production of Food Products
– Perspectives from the Food Chain, in Dallas, Texas. Its
purpose was to look at the safety of meat and eggs from animals
developed through somatic cell cloning (Ednet).
At the NAS meeting, proponents of genetic engineering said
that “genetic engineering simply does what nature does, only
faster and more precisely.” However, the evidence of animals
suffering from horrible birth defects and subsequent bizarre
pathologies who were born as a result of genetic engineering
experiments completely belies this claim (Kolata; Turner).
Scientists assert that what they are doing to nonhuman animals
in these experiments could never be morally justified if done
to humans, the results are so atrocious. They cite the abnormal
speed imposed on normal genetic processes, which in nature
take days, months, or years to develop, as one of the main
probable causes of “cloning calamities” in genetically modified
animals (Kolata).
Thus, along with human health and environmental concerns,
animal welfare concerns were noted in NPR’s report on the
NAS meeting at which these concerns were raised: The question
posed was that “Nobody worries about how the corn feels, but
when it comes to animals, is it fair to do this to them?”
The Blind Chicken Solution
In response, agribusiness “philosopher” Paul Thompson, of
Purdue University, brought up “the blind chicken problem.”4 He said that chickens blinded by “accident” have been developed
into a strain of blind laboratory chickens. These chickens,
he said, “don’t mind being crowded together so much as normal
chickens do.” Therefore, he said, a suggestion has been made
that we “ought to shift over to all blind chickens as a solution
to our animal welfare problems associated with crowding in
the poultry industry.” Thompson called this a “philosophical
conundrum,” because while most people would think that creating
blind chickens for the poultry and egg industry is “an absolutely
horrendous thing to do,” if it’s “the welfare of the individual
animal that really matters here, how the animals are doing,
then it would be more humane to have these blind chickens.”
The Headless Chicken Solution
Another scenario is getting rid of the birds’ heads. In 1993,
Robert Burruss wrote an essay in The Baltimore Sun
in which he predicted that the future of chicken and egg production
will include birds “beheaded and hooked up en masse to industrial-scale
versions of the heart-lung machines.” Since these birds won’t
move, cages will be obsolete. Nutrients, hormones and metabolic
stimulants will be fed “in superabundance into mechanically
oxygenated blood to crank up egg production.” Since no digestive
tract will be needed, “it can go when the head goes, along
with the heart and lungs and the feathers, too. The naked
headless, gutless chicken will crank out eggs till its ovaries
burn out. When a sensor senses that no egg has dropped within
the last four or six hours, the carcass will be released onto
a conveyer, chopped, sliced, steamed and made into soup, burgers
and dogfood” (Burruss).
Such fantasies are not fanciful. They are a mere “apotheosis”
of what is already happening, “probably already in the works,”
as Burruss writes. Because of us, he says, chickens already
have “bleak lives.” Because of us, they already live in “concentration
camps.” Indeed, as we have seen in this paper, they are totally
in the hands of Dr. Mengele.5
In her book Minds of Their Own (1997), bird
specialist Lesley J. Rogers says that an ultimate aim of breeding
programs for chickens and other domestic animals is to obtain
minds “so blunted that they will passively accept overcrowded
housing conditions and having virtually nothing to do but
eat—and then to eat standard and boring food delivered automatically”
(p. 185). Thus far, there is “no evidence” that chickens have
become so mentally blunted that they need or want no more
stimulation than they receive in battery farms, and indeed,
when chickens and other farmed animals are reintroduced to
more natural conditions, “they adapt rapidly to the better
conditions.” It is possible to change some aspects of their
behavior by selective breeding, but only within limits, Rogers
says. Domestic animals may be more accepting of humans, but
these behaviors “reflect temperament and motivation, not cognitive
abilities” (p. 185).
However, given that in industrial farming “the identities
of individual animals are completely lost” and animals are
seen only as “bodies, to be fattened or to lay eggs,” their
“higher cognitive abilities are ignored and definitely unwanted,”
Rogers explains.
Perhaps, in time, genetic engineers will “knock out” the brain
genes of these animals and the genes responsible for their
sense of being alive. Meanwhile, although domesticated chickens
“have retained complex cognitive abilities,” we treat these
birds viciously, and in the new age of genetic engineering,
we will treat them even worse. They will suffer in even greater
numbers from human-created disabilities, and though they will
continue to possess minds and consciousness, “they will not
be treated as such” (Rogers, p. 185).
It is fitting that Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi
SS, was a chicken breeding experimenter (Patterson, p. 100).
As tens of millions of birds who are being tortured in laboratories
throughout the world know well, that man may be dead, but
his genes have a life of their own.
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