The sound of 13,000 chickens squawking is far more menacing than I would have imagined. As we get closer to the 90 metre-long warehouse, the cacophony vibrates into a growl.
Inside, the buzzing of flies adds to the unsettling soundscape. As we enter, I have to step over a dead bird lying on the ground, its neck mangled from the suffocation it suffered at the hands of its own wired cage. All around me, and into the long corridors of darkness lined with mesh boxes about the same width and height as a laptop, are stressed egg-laying hens. Some peck at their feed manically, others fight for droplets of water from a tiny dispenser, but none of them can seem to stop moving, their dull claws slapping one another as they scramble around their boxes.
These chickens are not like the ones my grandmother used to keep, who would putter around the yard searching for grains and worms, and close their eyes and purr like cats when stroked. These chickens are machines; their wide eyes bulging with fear, their dirty feet cutting into the rusty bars beneath them, their three or four companions per cage jabbing at one another with blunt beaks. They are mutated monsters, created by a population which has overburdened the food industry. But this problem, contrary to what many believe, is not exclusive to first world, highly developed countries. In fact, the "farm" I describe above sits 17 kilometres outside of Chiang Mai city, where Charoen Pokphand Foods (CP, to you and me) has their name stamped on most of the tambon's agribusiness operations.
The sound of 13,000 chickens squawking is far more menacing than I would have imagined. As we get closer to the 90 metre-long warehouse, the cacophony vibrates into a growl.
Inside, the buzzing of flies adds to the unsettling soundscape. As we enter, I have to step over a dead bird lying on the ground, its neck mangled from the suffocation it suffered at the hands of its own wired cage. All around me, and into the long corridors of darkness lined with mesh boxes about the same width and height as a laptop, are stressed egg-laying hens. Some peck at their feed manically, others fight for droplets of water from a tiny dispenser, but none of them can seem to stop moving, their dull claws slapping one another as they scramble around their boxes.
These chickens are not like the ones my grandmother used to keep, who would putter around the yard searching for grains and worms, and close their eyes and purr like cats when stroked. These chickens are machines; their wide eyes bulging with fear, their dirty feet cutting into the rusty bars beneath them, their three or four companions per cage jabbing at one another with blunt beaks. They are mutated monsters, created by a population which has overburdened the food industry. But this problem, contrary to what many believe, is not exclusive to first world, highly developed countries. In fact, the "farm" I describe above sits 17 kilometres outside of Chiang Mai city, where Charoen Pokphand Foods (CP, to you and me) has their name stamped on most of the tambon's agribusiness operations.
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