Antibiotic-free chicken and floppy-armed gimmicks

Every morning that I have had the radio on and tuned to the local country station on the way to school--which certainly isn't every day--an advertisement from the major chicken producer Sanderson Farms has aired. It's one of those silly, annoying ads, even apart from its message. Two men are talking in a car sales parking lot, with an inflatable tube "salesman" audibly flapping in the background. Naturally they're discussing chicken, more specifically the fact that more and more producers besides, of course, Sanderson Farms, the nation's third-largest producer, are going antibiotic-free.

"That's just a trick to get you to pay more money," one of the gentlemen says.

"Fact is," the other adds, "by Federal law all chickens must be clear of antibiotics before they leave the farm."

"It's a marketing gimmick," the first concludes, "like Mr. Floppy Arms here."

Our own Kleinshire chicken has always been organically fed, free range, and wholly antibiotic free.

Is antibiotic-free meat just a marketing gimmick as Sanderson Farms would like to have us believe? Is there really no threat to human health that comes from pumping animals full of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent the spread of disease, a nearly ubiquitous agricultural practice since antibiotics first hit the market in the 1940s? Of course not. I suppose that Sanderson Farms didn't have time in their silly ad to explain that while the chicken sold in stores is free from antibiotics, it isn't necessarily free from bacteria, including potential superbugs that have developed due to the overuse of antibiotics. That's why a lot of meat is sprayed with aluminium sulfate before hitting the grocery store shelves. Remember "pink slime," anybody?

I won't hold it against the country station for running Sanderson Farms' ad because they have to pay their bills. But it's is getting awfully annoying. Maybe it's time to return to something more productive during the morning commute, like pray the rosary?

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About chicken, in any case, every few months for the last three years we have ordered a few dozen chicks from Hoover's Hatchery in rural Iowa. They come overnight in the mail, and the boys take great delight in helping to dip their beaks in the water and get them accustomed to their surroundings. When they're old enough to withstand the elements, we move them out of the garage and into a chicken run attached to the barn. There they feast upon Reedy Fork organic feed for another month and a half until they reach 5-6 pounds, at which time we process them. A small number of colleagues and friends get a chicken, or two, or five, at every processing. We sell just enough to break even, basically getting to eat organic free-range chicken year-round free of charge.

Obviously we will be scaling up dramatically next year at our new farm in Wisconsin. I'm not sure what the market will be like for farm-fresh chicken. La Crosse isn't exactly ritzy big-city Raleigh, where people are eager to pay $4.25/lb. Organic feed in Wisconsin costs half what it does in North Carolina, though. We'll have to start slowly and cautiously with the chicken nonetheless. Right now our tentative business plan does include raising 100 or more Thanksgiving turkeys and trying our best to market them. I'm pretty confident that there's potential with the turkeys.

So, we're not Sanderson Farms here at Kleinshire, but we are in the bird business, albeit in a small-but-growing fashion. Whether people want antibiotic-free chicken, and why, is something that certainly interests us.

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Along those lines, I have been reflecting on a recent NPR interview mainly about Perdue Farms, a producer which is now nearly entirely antibiotic free. Perdue Farms, according to this interview, has eliminated not only the antibiotics that are used to treat humans, but ionophores as well, a class of antibiotics that are actually toxic to humans. Why ionophores, if they'd help to keep chickens healthy without any potential harm to humans? Apparently it's for marketing reasons. "Our customers have already told us that they want chicken raised without any antibiotics," the CEO said in a statement to NPR.

As I understand it, the implication of the CEO's statement is that many Americans eagerly buy into the hype of labels like "antibiotic-free" simply because they're the newest health fad. These labels are legion, some more closely policed by the USDA, some still emblematic of a foodie Wild West: "organic," for example, or "all-natural," "free-range," "farm fresh," or "farm-to-table." These labels give food the allure of freshness, health, and nutrition. Surely organic produce is healthier and more nutritious, despite the fact that farmers can spray highly toxic copper sulfate on their produce; surely free-range chicken is more nutritious, despite the USDA requiring only two square feet per bird.

I am very much against the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, but my reasons are mostly philosophical, not scientific, and certainly not practical. As I see it, animals need to be treated decently because they are living beings, part of God's creation. The conditions that necessitate the overuse of antibiotics are not exemplary in that respect. If you don't believe me, then search Youtube for any term along the lines of "chicken mass production." Or read Matthew Schmitz's description, in the January 2017 issue of First Things, of his college-years experience helping to rewire a hog confinement facility. Take-away line from Schmitz: "We intuitively feel that it is unnatural to keep pigs packed together on hard concrete--but we do not see that there is something equally unhealthy about human lives that have no contact with husbandry and hunting. Pigs, kept in close confinement, bite off each other's tails. Humans, freed from all contact with regulated violence of farm life, become squeamish savages."

To be clear, I am not against the use of antibiotics altogether, but I am wholly against raising animals in conditions that require their medication from hatched egg, from birth, to the butchering block. I think that it's bad for the animals, who are not treated in accord with their nature. I think it's bad for us, because, as Schmitz argues, we become insensible to the violence that is a necessary, essential part of the natural order, the violence that in the end bears each one of us away.

It's a very, very small step, I suppose, but props to Perdue and the other major producers who've changed their practices in order to reduce their dependence on antibiotics. Props to Chick-fil-A, and, of all fast food joints, most recently McDonalds, for moving to the slightly more expensive chicken. For our own part, if we apply for the "organic" label at our Wisconsin farm next year, which we plan to do, and which prohibits the use of antibiotics altogether, it's not because we believe in the label per se, but because it opens up the market to customers who want what we produce, whether they want it for the right reasons or not. Maybe over time we can tame their squeamish savagery just a tad.

If not, I will yield to any label that doesn't violate my conscience, because ultimately the customer is always right.