Superbugs found in British chickens

Significant numbers of chickens sold in British shops are infected with antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”. In a survey commissioned by the BBC, more than half of the chickens examined were infected with a form of E. coli that was resistant to at least one antibiotic. The Health Protection Agency scientits also found that 12 chickens, from a total sample of 147, had antibiotic resistant Campylobacter. A third bug, Vancomycin Resistant Enterococco, was found in one in 25 of the samples.

In most cases the the bacteria would be killed off during the cooking process. But if the meat were not cooked thoroughly, the bugs could cause serious illnesses. None of the chickens sampled was organic, and nearly half were reared in Britain. Dr Mike Millar, a microbiologist at St Barts Hospital in London, believes the findings could explain the rise in the number of women whose bladder infections don’t respond to the standard antibiotic treatment. “Potentially this is very worrying,” he told BBC Online.

So… do you want to know all the reasons I don’t each chicken? Are you sure you want to know?

Chickens raised for meat are crowded by the thousands in “grower houses” where each is given approximately half a square foot of space.

Egg laying hens are packed into ‘battery cages’ which are lined up in rows in huge factory warehouses.

According to industry, chickens are debeaked to protect them from one another. A day old chick’s beak is pressed against a red hot metal blade at 800oC. Often it goes through the tongue. Chickens injured during debeaking die of starvation. What the industry is blind to is that it is not chickens beak that is the cause of violent, abnormal and cannibalistic behavior among chicken, but the overcrowded, unnatural conditions of their living in cages. Free-range chickens do not kill each other with their beaks. They find worms and food for their own nourishment.

Unwanted male chicks struggle to survive amid egg shells and garbage in a dumpster behind a hatchery for laying hens.

Crowded in crates stacked on the back of a large truck, chickens are transported to the slaughterhouse.

At the slaughter plant, hundreds of birds are roughly handled and hung upside down in shackles. Then they are passed through a machine that slits their throats. Some birds of different sizes or those that panic and struggle away from the blades miss them completely or get partially slit across the head. Those unlucky birds are petrified and fully conscious as they enter boiling tanks. Actually, that photo was pretty mild. Maybe you should see it in context.

This is what happens to millions of chickens every day, and we don’t care. Bearing all this in mind, and with the luxury of all the food options we have, would it kill you to give up chicken? If you think that by giving up chicken you’re hardly making a difference, you’re wrong. Imagine how many chickens the average person consumes in their lifetime.