Feather removal machines as a vector??

[gsgs]

Re: Feather removal machines as a vector??

soon some moderator puts this in the dungeon as tasteless

[AnnaLisa]

Re: Feather removal machines as a vector??

I know I'm going off topic with this; but this quote from the article that AnnaLisa linked to has me wondering how personal care products and caffeine could have gotten into chicken feathers.

From what I have read, the caffeine, diphehydramine, tylenol and Prozac are fed to the chickens. Caffeine to keep them awake and eating, diphenhaydramine (Benadryl) to get them to sleep on schedule after all the caffeine. Prozac to keep them 'happy', less aggressive, sedated, and I imagine Tylenol for pain. I haven't seen the list of all 59 compounds.

Around my neck of the woods, they take the manure and the dead chickens, bake them, and make it into a cleverly named fertilizer they pass off as 'organic' and enviromentally friendly, if you don't mind the 59 more or less compounds in your garden or on your lawn.

Tasteless, I agree. It's hard to eat any chicken besides my own tough old birds, even given the effort and disagreable process I need to get through to 'process' them. Tough old birds make fine meat if cooked properly. I agree! Meat chicken breeds are butchered very early in life and are the more tasty chicken we are used to.

[mixin]

Re: Feather removal machines as a vector??

AnnaLisa, you may ignore gsgs's remark about tasteless. He was being funny, referring to the picture I posted and the video.

But aside from that, you're right..there is a huge difference in the taste of chickens. The info in that link you posted was a real eye-opener. I buy antibiotic free chicken but I may not be getting it??

And welcome to the forum.

Apologies to Treyfish for taking his thread OT.

[Nox]

Re: Feather removal machines as a vector??

This also raises the question of exporting of waste in counterfeit down products. I was listening to an interview on CBC radio 1 about chicken feather mulch which included beaks, feet, and feces in counterfeit high end winter coats. Can you imagine how much of a health risk this poses?

He's worried about the alternative fillers used instead. "What they do have in them is called 'feather mulch,' which is anything you pick up off the floor. It's feathers, it's beaks, it's feet. Covered in feces, covered in mildew, covered in bacteria."

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/06/17/cheap-knockoffs-and-counterfeits-can-be-hazardous-to-your-health/

[AnnaLisa]

Re: Feather removal machines as a vector??

It's hard to say what you are getting in your chicken. We have one 'organic' producer in our state, that has 72,000 chickens in 724 housing units. Basically big pens. That said, it could be a very nice biosecure facility. I don't know. I haven't seen that one. I would think it very risky for them to have that many chickens in any containment and not be medicating them.

I live in a county with millions of laying hens. I KNOW what is happening with that manure. It is being sprayed on thousands of acres, along with cow dung. The bigger cities have thought we may also be a good toilet for their sewage and industrial sludge as well....they figure flinging that thru irrigation sprinklers could have a beneficial effect. I have a nitrate level in my water that is more than double the state limit of 10mg/L. I need an RO. I wonder what pharmaceuticals and ag chemicals are in my water if nitrates are that high. I am reluctant to have my chickens free range, because they do occassionally get off my property to the west, which is not a 'safe' area. It's cropland for a near by dairy CAFO, and a they also allow spreading of chicken manure here. This manure does not smell like manure. I spent most of my adult life around dairy farms and I know 'dairyair'...this is not dairyair. You can smell the chemicals. Other people also comment, 'What's that smell?' When they have the 'cooker' going, it reeks in town so bad, it smells like a rendering plant. (They are baking manure and chicken carcasses.) And this is a gorgeous town, with upper middle class homes.

My only editorial comment on this situation is we are not farming sustainably. The environment can not absorb this amount of manure locally, and the manure is full of synthetic contaminants, which wildlife ingests. People without RO are also drinking this around here, because the water doesn't appear foul.

As far as antibiotic free chicken, it could be antibiotic free but with some other chemical. Arsenic is a big one. I do know totally organic producers, and their chickens are not cheap. My eggs are not cheap either (altho I sell cheaper than the store organic eggs). Organic feed costs a fortune, and to be honest, it is really hard to keep organic plants from not cross polinating with GMOs. Now I will have to do more biosecurity, and that isn't cheap either. It's going to cost me several hundred, maybe a thousand dollars to pen them in better and the WORK of keeping that highly contained environment clean! It's enough to make me cull my flock down to just what my family uses.

I can sympathize with the small Chinese poultry farmer. They are just trying to survive, as are the people who buy this chicken. I am sure most of them are not privy to the information we have. I imagine they have CAFOs around them too. From what I have seen of wet markets on youtube, it looks like a breeding ground for every disease on the planet. I am surprised we don't see a lot more disese coming from regions with wet markets. It seems to me, meat markets in China need their own 'venue' and they need a good deal of cleaning up.

We in our vast knowledge, have made a mess of the planet, resulting in new diseases.

The defeathering machines would certainly spread H7N9 around the environment. As to how H7N9 got to its current virulence and pathogenicity, I'm not schooled enough in poultry genetics to say. I am just giving the public a birds eye view of what it is like to live in the chicken industry zone. It seems to me, that small and medium size farms were more eco-friendly. I once read that gigantism preceeds extinction of a species. Perhaps it will be the same with industry?

Thanks for bearing with me. I realize this forum is more about stats and polymorphisms. I am into that too.