I’ve got a problem with Temple Grandin’s book Animals Make Us Human. I was really going to let my frustration about this book subside. Partly because I’m sure everyone is tired of my bottomless interest in animal welfare and partly because I don’t know if I can come off without sounding like a raving animal rights looney. Well, readers and labels be damned, I just can’t help myself.
My problem with this text is very specific and limited. I dig some of the writing. There is just the small problem of the chickens (and all their welfare represents).
See, the first portion of Animals Make Us Human outlines in detail the emotional welfare issues at stake with cats, dogs and horses. Among these is an animal’s innate need to be free to do doggy/kitty/horsey things. Gradin even goes so far as to suggest that free-roaming dogs may be less safe, but they are probably emotionally healthier than their house-bound-bored-stiff brethren. I tend to agree.
The last portion of the book considers the welfare of wildlife in captivity , particularly those in zoos. Much is made of the importance of a zero stress environment. So much so that Gradin advises against tranquilizing animals for blood sample collection. Rad. I’m with her.
Then there is the middle portion of the book devoted to cows, pigs and chickens. You know where I’m going with this. Stockyards and slaughterhouses. This isn’t the vegetarian in me writing; this is the kid raised in a farm-like environment at the keyboard. I won’t argue with Grandin’s analysis of cattle and pigs. That would be presumptuous of me. I don’t know enough about their behavior. However, when it comes to chickens, just call me field-observer extraordinaire.
My childhood saw a better part of many afternoons inside a chicken coop or carrying around one of my grandfather’s bantam hens. These chickens were the kind I would consider healthy physically and emotionally.
Grandin mentions that chicken welfare requires the reduction or elimination of certain industry practices. Still, I don’t think this is the end of the issue. The behaviors Grandin cites (excessive pecking, feather pulling, aggression etc.) are, in my (limited) experience, signs of chicken insanity. Healthy chickens don’t do these things with any consistency. Also, I’m not sure what separates these chickens from the chickens in the petting area of the zoo or peacocks, guinea fowl and other common zoo birds. According to Gradin’s logic, zoo chickens would be handled with kid gloves while industry chickens, well, let’s just hope they don’t suffer needless injury or go crazy from totally un-chicken-like housing. And then. And then. If that chicken becomes a pet, all sorts of other standards begin to be applied. Thinking about animal welfare this way has always made my brain want to explode. I just don’t see the distinction. Aren’t all chickens created chicken?
What saddens me most is that I suspect industry chickens aren’t simply becoming insane over time, but more and more often, are born that way. It takes no time at all to breed ten generations of chickens in captivity. Over time, family lines may become permanently and detrimentally rewired. You can’t create an environment ensuring welfare if you’ve genetically screwed the entire population. That, to me, is the cruelest trick. What’s the point of having chickens around at all if their lives are one consistent misery? Regardless of whether engineered meat makes the practice of keeping meat animals obsolete and thereby threatens their population on this planet (or creates new and novel welfare issues), at least a chicken breast grown in a petri dish won’t suffer. Industry, as represented by the thoughtful and good-intentioned Gradin and many others, seems totally incapable of solving the animal welfare issues it’s created.
PS – Slap me on the back next time you see me because I restrained myself from re-writing this whole entry to accommodate some tirade against Pilgrim’s Pride and its kind.
And Christ effed up my order.
Look what came in the mail today! I can’t overstate how much


Started putting the Corpse headpiece together today and this is where I am so far. It’s lovely how much fun I can have on 10 dollars at Hobby Lobby.
