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kinther @lemmy.world

2d ago

Hickman’s Family Farms loses 95% of Arizona chickens to bird flu

www.azfamily.com

Hickman’s Family Farms loses 95% of Arizona chickens to bird flu

57 comments

“If our pullets had been vaccinated when we started lobbying the federal government in January, our pullets would have been saved right now. So we would have been able to restock much more quickly,” he said. “We need to access the vaccine that the federal government has already approved. We need to be able to start giving it to our flocks and the quicker that we can start vaccinating our nation’s poultry flock, the quicker that we can get back to normalized operations.”
Uh huh, uh huh, tell us who you voted for there pal? Also, how much do you pay your prison inmate ‘employees’?
- That part was one of the biggest revelations to me. I had no idea Arizona had a for-profit jail system that is essentially pseudo-slavery.
  
  It's not pseudo-slavery, it's actual 100% legal slavery according to the words of the 13th Amendment of the US constitution.
  Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States
  
  it's slavery. no need to soften it

Hickman also announced a reduction in force. The egg producer has approximately 850 employees, including contract workers and state inmates.
Headline News: Tobacco Business On Ropes as Planation Owner Lays Off Slaves

Reads headline
Oh no.
Reads article
The egg producer has approximately 850 employees, including contract workers and state inmates.
Oh no, anyway.

Hickman also announced a reduction in force. The egg producer has approximately 850 employees, including contract workers and state inmates.
Hmm. Inmates, you say? Maybe I think it's fine that you go out of business.
- Also:
  About six million birds were lost.
  How healthy can that be, for birds, handlers, or consumers, in the best of times?
  
  We know that capitalism is self-correcting so don't worry, it'll shake itself out

I feel so sad for all those chickens.
- If you really want to gag, look up ventilation shutdown. It's a method used to mass-kill chickens, e.g. in the event of a disease outbreak. It has also been used on pigs.
  The entire animal-ag industry deserves to fail.
  
  If you really want to gag, look up ventilation shutdown.
  that's the nice treatment, usually they just shred baby chicks alive or give them the electric chair treatment before slicing their neck open
- If it makes you feel any better, they probably had miserable lives to start with...

It's ALMOST like factory farming isn't a profitable or a sane practice. /s
Unsurprising that he uses slave labor, too.

I really wish all able countries would move away from meat. The cruelty we inflict on these poor animals is absolutely insane.
- People are weirdly, emotionally, invested in meat. Like it's part of their identity.
  I enjoy the taste of meat but I recognize it's not good for the environment or the animals. So I avoid eating meat. It's not a big deal. But for some people they act like you're going to eat them and bury their bones in an unmarked grave.
- Hopefully, with the advances that have been coming along in lab grown, we will.
  It'll be a hard fight against the lobbys though.
  
  Yeah you're right about that. Farms like the one in the article have far too much influence.
  
  Very hard to fight the lobbies. It's already illegal to sell lab grown meat in Florida and Alabama and I'm not even sure anyone is selling it to consumers yet.
- Until we subsidize meat replacement options and get the price AT LEAST equal to regular meat, it just won't happen.
  
  Don't know in the US, but in Canada I buy meat on sale when it hits the same price as tofu so I don't get what you mean...
  
  Humans don't need meat or meat substitutes though.
- I’ll take the meat if they can get rid of the slavery…

At least the remaining 5% can enjoy some extra room to move until they can pack it solid again…

What they don't tell you is that it is ridiculously cheap and easy for chicken farmers to replace lost chickens.
The chicken/egg shortage from the bird flu was resolved in under 2 weeks, but they used that opportunity to keep prices high.
- They also don't tell you that this kind of farming where all the birds are crammed together is a great way to increase the chances of it mutating into a human pandemic. And the Trump administration is busily cutting everything that could protect the human population should that happen. No vaccine research, no vaccines, no monitoring.
  
  You know fully well that vaccines make frogs gay. It's a protective measure not to use them!
- It's cheap and easy but how could they do it in 2 weeks? They take about 6 months to reach maturity and start laying.
  I believe we could have got more eggs from elsewhere and that the corporations were being greedy but I you can't accelerate the growth to a laying age.
  
  They don't wait for birds to die to raise their replacements. Think of it like a flowing conveyor. The culled birds were going to be replaced eventually anyway, and ramping up production probably means paying more to get birds, and they will produce fewer eggs for a short while.
- Greedflation

Shame they aren't ostriches, because then you'd have billionaires volunteering to adopt the infected birds.

Why post fake news? Biden did this and to be true, you voted for this, so you should not complain or post fake news to show how bad Trump is! Gwon on mate, don't post fake news!!!! /S

57 comments