Saturday September 5, 2009



I love it I love it I love it having my house back even after these few weeks....I don't have to "hide" anything anymore here in my own house just because I don't want certain other people to see...mostly anyone family related... but everything from my books I could just leave out, to things scattered on here, either when I would first turn it on and what stuff would appear to things on my desktop I had to hide everything and it was extremely irritating...I am NEVER going though that again ever ever ever....If any type of family I don't care who it is next time tries to come where ever we are next, I am saying I'm having to go to Hawaii for an "emergency surgery" or something,when I would really be enjoying my own vacation instead of
nymore at least...=p hmm what else nothing has been happening here....this is the most boring place on earth so I don't care what they have going on here cause it's all Japanese-related...the sidewalk concerts, the street fairs, any type of celebrations out in town...I've been dying to go to an American-related concert *****IN ENGLISH!!!!!****** for soooo many years now that I've lost count, but they don't come here....guess I can plan for that next where ever I end up next....just to remember what it's like and how things used to be before this lifestyle....Our state fair is going on now back home and I am missing that.....>=( I went like 2-3 times the last time I was home and still wanted to keep going right up until I was about to leave....We have nothing like that here at all...or if we do, the pathetic thing is held in about 3 parking lots and it's so lame and completely boring, that it's so not even worth it....not with as big as our state fair was back home...Small towns result to parking lots and blocking off a few streets and are satisfied....I will never get used to that ever I don't care what they try to do or where they try to put me....So, it's Labor Day weekend for everyone...the very last holiday of the summer....I couldn't be happier cause summer here was a nightmare for me it was so hot and miserable...but at least this time I didn't get sent to the hospital like I did twice last year over the heat....It's just nice to have time off to do things that I want to do, and not have to worry about some time schedule....Oh, and another reason I won't touch eggs, I just found this story on AOL, and I couldn't even finish reading it, it turned my stomach so bad, and I haven't even had breakfast yet....Warning: Baby chicks ground alive so we can eat our omelets...Horror, but no surprise, was my reaction when I first read of the undercover video shot at an Iowa hatchery, where day-old male chicks are sent, alive, through a grinder. Their sisters are destined for egg production; Hy-Line North America, the hatchery in the video (below), sells 33.4 million chicks a year. For Americans to eat eggs for breakfast, these chicks must die. This practice is not a shocking exception; this is standard and, according to officials at the hatchery, the "instantaneous euthanasia" is supported by veterinarians and agricultural scientists. Chicken farmers and sustainable food activists couldn't help but realize something like this was occurring: because our poultry system is almost irreparably broken.

I am most decidedly not a vegetarian, but I haven't eaten chicken in more than a year and I raise all my own eggs in my backyard (from chickens who, I now know, must have seen their brothers perish by chipper) because of my discomfort with our modern poultry practices. Here is how the industry works, today: only one breed of chickens is raised for meat, the Cornish Cross. (According to chicken farmers and industry experts who I've questioned, greater than 99 percent of American meat chickens are Cornish Cross.)


These chickens have been bred for complete docility, insanely fast growth and nothing else. They cannot have Cornish Cross chicken babies -- they are a genetic hybrid and all would-be mama hens are artificially inseminated -- and they are essentially incapable of "free ranging" as they have lost their ability to forage for food. They will not walk 10 feet to get water if it is 100 degrees, and farmers seeking to raise these chickens outside of battery cages typically lose many birds during hot weather.

Cornish Cross chickens are used for meat today because economics, and not sustainable or humane practices, is the sole concern of the poultry industry. In addition, the American consumer has been conditioned to spend very little per pound for chicken. In 1935, the average meat chicken weighed 2.8 pounds and took about 112 days -- 16 weeks -- to reach market weight. In 1995, the average weight was 4.7 pounds after only 47 days; less than seven weeks. To gain that extremely fast growth rate and to adjust to the efficient, highly-concentrated breeding operations (in which chickens are kept in cages whose area is smaller than a sheet of paper), the balanced growth of all other systems was sacrificed, "resulting in failed tendons and crippled legs, compromised immune systems, heart failure, and other problems," as one chicken breeder writes.

Cornish Cross hens are entirely unsuitable for egg-laying because of this; they have been bred with nothing but meat in mind, to the exclusion of other organs, so that they are prone to heart attacks and are not likely to live long enough to start laying. Thus, it is untenable for poultry operations to raise the females for eggs and the males for meat -- common practice up to about 1950. Here is what we have: tens of millions of Cornish Cross birds bred for meat each year; and in another hatchery, tens of millions of female chicks bred for egg laying each year. These two operations, which in every other time but our own, could have worked together sensibly, boys for meat, girls for eggs, have spun out from each other into chaos.

Warning: This video contains graphic and disturbing footage.



"What can we do?" the hatchery spokesperson asks. "If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we're happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need."

In other words, it is our love for plentiful and inexpensive chicken meat that has brought us to the place where we are routinely and with the blessing of veterinarians and scientists grinding up tens of millions of baby animals, alive, each year. Let us be clear: the only violations that are depicted in these videos are the minority of baby chicks that fall to the factory floor to die there. It is no violation to grind them alive.

The answer to the problem, activist group Mercy for Animals suggests, is for us all to become vegan. This is obviously unworkable: most people won't become vegan just because of this video. We love our eggs and chicken meat. We'll rationalize the cruelty, we won't watch the video (even I couldn't watch more than a minute), we'll sweep our discomfort under the proverbial rug.

But there is a better way. It's much harder, but it's far more sensible. It is to re-couple the poultry industry so that eggs and meat are produced by the same farms, much more slowly, much more expensively, much more sustainably. For this we will have to be prepared to pay $4 or $5 per dozen for eggs and $5 or $6 per pound for chicken meat. We'll have to eat less. We'll have to waste less.

Until we're ready to do that, we'll instead waste 30 or 40 or 50 million baby boy chicks each year, through the chipper, alive. Which price do you choose?


I had those as pets growing up....I either got them for Easter or for my birthday...I never knew they did anything like that.....how much more disgusting can people get???????? I tried watching the video that went along with that but I could barely get past the first few min of it...http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/03/warning-baby-boy-chicks-ground-alive-so-you-can-eat-eggs/?icid=main%7cmain%7cdl3%7clink3%7chttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailyfinance.com%252F2009%252F09%252F03%252Fwarning-baby-boy-chicks-ground-alive-so-you-can-eat-eggs-go down to video if u can stand to watch stuff like that and still be able to eat...

Anyways, guess I"ll take off now hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend....I'll put something on here with a little bit more humor later on....take care all talk with u soon....