Compulsory Voting

[The Grand Nudger]

Actually, they are,  and not having a mother has serious health consequences for the calf. The idea dairy cows make poor mothers was created by the dairy industry so that the calves don't drink the milk and cut into their profits. Cow sanctuaries and farms where cows are not removed have consistently shown cows can take care of their young.

OK, who is NOW spreading vegan propaganda?

.....?  It's a known fact, and a massive industry, breeding animals for confinement and profitability.  

For the same reason, laying hens are selected based on their size, broodiness, and production.  You want small hens that don't eat much, lay alot of eggs, and have no interest in caring for their young.  This gets them in and out of the laying boxes as quickly as possible, with as much floor density as possible, at the lowest price to producer.  

Heritage breeds, that lack some or even all of these attributes, are maintained as genetic stock.  Two of the most unsuitable breeds of chicken with respect to the layer model actually breed to form one half of the production mainline breeds (red and black sex-links).  Both of them are large, they're not bad layers but they're far from good, they're foragers and fighters, and the hens are broody as shit.  As far as meat, that market is entirely comprised of just one breed, the cornish cross - which is a terrible egg layer, requires a specialized feed, and is so dumb they literally cannot survive outside of confinement.  OTOH, they have a genetic abnormality as a product of the cross that means they reach full (chicken) size in a short 8 weeks, as opposed to the 27 of heritage breeds.  If let to go to 27, they're as big as turkeys. Now, don't feel too bad for the big boys, just because they'll be eaten. The layers tend to live about three years (though they're usually replaced after two - mostly composted but some end up as stewing or roasting hens - the small whole birds in the aisle by the big packages of boneless skinless cornish x breast) because they go through a demons resume of reproductive issues (cancers, tumors, etc) on account of laying an egg a day or more over their short lives.

This is how the sausage is made.  Not propaganda.  It's the difference between 50 birds per acre and 500.  The difference between raising chickens or producing eggs for sale being profitable, and not.  The difference between being able to provide people with this nutrition, or not. As it stands, with heritage breeds (and even small flocks of sex links), you can't make money from selling chickens or eggs competitively in the us.  You have to make your money by selling pasture owners on the fertility, pest control, and weed suppression benefits, or selling relatively wealthy people on the lifestyle.  The break even price on a pound of pasture raised chicken is a little over $6 - so, consider that the next time you buy chicken that advertises itself as such but comes in at a lower price.

As a fun fact, chicken is, perhaps, the least efficient and sustainable protein source in all of conventional ag. It relies heavily on subsidies and exploited labor alongside absolutely horrific living conditions for the stock as well as an endless supply of cheap monocultured grains. In the wild, chickens are half market size, taste like shit, and lay an egg a month. Cattle, by comparison, are fucking machines...and the best use of a chicken, is to keep cattle on pasture healthy - and to help cultivate the tastiest slips of the most nutritious forage in a regenerative model. People here might be familiar with the phrase "a chicken in every pot" but, because of the passage of time and the ubiquity of chicken today - we forget why this was such an alluring promise. It was an indicator of wealth and decadence, sold to the poor.

Now, for the real kicker, with respect to cattle and poultry - because the animals used are what we would call f1 hybrids..bred for our purposes and not theirs - left to their own devices, they will not reproduce true to type and cannot be profitably bred with each other. Which is to say that the calf of an absentee cow or hen will not, itself, reliably produce absentee offspring. It takes strict control at every point to maintain this situation - which is why it's so vulnerable to any number of market or environmental disturbances. With all of this in mind, do we consider the people who work hard for very little to do this evil, or do we acknowledge that they are presented with a set of exclusively suboptimal decisions..and, absent any actual motivation to do harm, modify our final moral judgement of the person and their actions? I mean, I doubt anyone here loves my birds like I do, but I'm sure as shit not interested in making food exclusively for the rich, so that 500 number sounds a whole lot better than the 50 - and all I can do is treat my birds a bit better than purdue's captive labor force treats theirs - though I'm sure they'd treat theirs better, too, if they could afford it. OTOH, I'm a breeder - I maintain those heritage flocks that the poor fucks are bred out of, and if I just stopped doing that - on the one hand...there would be fewer suitable birds for abusive industries to leverage, and on the other, people would starve and fall into poverty.

Decisions decisions..eh? Maybe, just maybe, the moral onus is on the consumer, instead of the producer? What a person will pay for their food - and it doesn't matter if that's veggies or meat, determines the conditions of the production environment. Veggies are, amusingly, even more abusive in this regard than meat. People get into livestock because it pays better, people get into processing because there is the possibility of benefits, lol. No such luck for your pickers and packers, and whatever animals their own models depend on, whether that's on farm, or in the area around the mine or well where they source their fertility.