Meatball Wrote:I have a hard time believing that a factory-farmed chicken leads a better life than a wild turkey or grouse or whatever. Living in a cage with just enough room to open it's wings and turn around is not a good life. Just because it is fed on a regular basis and gets antibiotics doesn't mean it has a better quality of life. A chicken that runs free but dies in the jaws of a coyote or from some brutal disease is leagues ahead of a prisoner chicken is pumped full of nutrients and medicine in a box.
That said, chickens are awful, stupid creatures who are good for nothing but eating. I just think there's a distinction to be made for their "quality of life" in comparison to similar creatures living a free-range or wild existence.
That's why you need to discount battery (factory) farming, it would be the same as saying that a tortured slave has a better quality of life than a surfer who dies from gangreen
I don't think chickens have any consciousness, at least it's heavily suggested by data.
.
