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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Leigh Hauter: claim that poultry are being fed homones

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  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Leigh Hauter: claim that poultry are being fed homones
  • Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 17:24:18 -0500

Lucy,

I agree with you about how unbelievably fast those large breasted breeds grows. We raised some white rocks for ourselves last year and they were mature in something like 4-5 weeks (and the few I didn't butcher started dying of what I assumed were heart attacks after about 10 weeks-they could hardly walk).

What I said in the original post was according to my wife's research (she wrote a report on chicken slaughter houses for Public Citizen) many meat inspectors suspect hormones but there is no inspection going on one way or the other. No one really knows. Her report mostly dealt with the idea to deregulate meat inspection, legislation that has a good chance of passing in Washington where we basically do away with USDA inspectors and have the industry 'self' inspect. The point is, with the large, almost monopolistic chicken industry, there is less and less regulations and if the industry gets its way, there won't be any at all. Some people on this list might like that idea.

Another fact: in many states the contract chicken growers do not know what is in the feed they feed their birds. The exception is the few states with right to know legislation. There have been several law suits where growers and consumers have tried to find out what perdue etc is feeding its chickens but unless your state has a law on the books making them tell, they don't have to. Down here in Virginia we don't have such a law, I bet, probably, Wisconsin does. (I might be wrong about Wisc, though).

After my wife finished her research, interviewing inspectors, talking to company reps, legislators, visiting large chicken slaughterhouses, etc. etc. I can't convince her to eat chicken that we don't raise ourselves.

Maybe the growers out there that have a relatively small USDA bird slaughterhouse have higher standards than the ones she saw in the large factory chicken industry similar to what is out on the Delmarva Peninsula or over in the Shenandoah Valley. Here in our part of Virginia we can't find anything like that within at least 100 miles. As far as I can tell a USDA inspected chicken slaughter house does not exist in our area for the small grower.




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