In the first episode of TV series ‘Meat the Family,’ which aired on TVNZ 1 last night, a family was given three chickens to raise as ‘pets’ over a three-week period.
At the end of this time they were then faced with the decision whether to kill and eat the animals they had cared for and bonded with or save their lives by going vegetarian and sending the animals to a sanctuary.
SAFE spokesperson Will Appelbe says the option offered to the family to have the chickens slaughtered was very sanitised.
“If they had to see the birds being slaughtered, or slaughter the birds themselves, I think they would have made a different decision.”
Appelbe says the family traumatised themselves over their decision whether or not to slaughter the birds they had bonded with, because the alternative choice of vegetarianism seemed unthinkable.
“What they needed was someone to say to them, ‘Actually, you don’t need to kill the animals you love. It’s easy to go vegetarian, and this is how you do it.’”
The show also described in detail the suffering chickens bred for meat have to endure during their short lives.
There are no slow-growing breeds currently available in New Zealand, so the approximately 120 million chickens bred for meat in New Zealand all suffer from the same health complications described in the show.
Haven’t read the blog, but we had around 17 chickens which we primarily fed for egg laying, occasionally the older ones who were off the lay permanently got the axe and were put into the pot. No problem. Our cousins would get surplus eggs.
As for battery hens and the like. No way. Ours could roam outside so long as they didn’t get into the vege patch.
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