Small Flockers: Can they Save the World?

The chicken factory farm CAFO's and their partners in crime, the huge multi-million dollar chicken slaughtering & processing plants claim only they can feed the world.  Are they right, or is there an opportunity for Small Flockers to help or lead the world to safer, better, more affordable food.

I previously posted on this Blog about the quality and safety of the chickens produced by Small Flockers.  Let's compare that Small Flock farmers to the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) factory farms and huge slaughter plants that I call the Chicken Mafia under Canada's Supply Management monopoly.

In a previous Blog posting, we mentioned how a farmer with a sharp knife can slaughter chickens so they have only 133 CFU (Colony Forming Units) of bacterial contamination on the chicken.  Alternatively, the Chicken Mafia's multi-million dollar mega chicken factories regularly use their high speed, expensive machines, plus are forced to dunk and soak the chickens in many different baths of strong, noxious chemicals so as to kill or wash away some  of the bacterial contamination their system has created, and with all that, the Chicken Mafia are only able to achieve 3600 CFU's.  The Chicken Mafia has 27 times higher contamination than one farmer with a sharp knife in his hand.  See Hope for Mega Meat Manufacturers?

Does that differential of contamination for Canadian chicken really make a significant difference?

In a previous Blog posting, we estimated that 2.7 Canadians are killed each year from the Chicken Mafia's CAFO-contaminated chicken, raised and processed in Canada.  We therefore conclude that if all of the chicken was processed on the farm by a farmer and his sharp knife (a technique proven to work for centuries), the death rate from chicken contamination would be at or close to zero.

OK, so the Small Flock farmers clearly win on the food quality and safety issues.  But can they produce sufficient chicken to feed everybody?

Most people assume that growing and processing millions of chickens requires economy of scales.  The public doesn't like it, but they assume that chicken factories are a necessary evil if we are to have cheap chicken in sufficient quantity.

Small Flock Farmers would like to say "Chicken Manure!" to those assumptions promoted by the Chicken Mafia's propaganda.  This is the same as Bull Shit!, but more species appropriate.  You are being hoodwinked by the Chicken Mafia's propaganda.

In a video taken at an event sponsored by Mother Earth Magazine, and starring Joel Salatin, a Small Flock farmer extraordinaire in Virginia USA, Joel explains how his on-farm chicken slaughter system uses an 8 person crew set up in his farm pasture, and he can process 200 birds per hour.  Joel can eviscerated a plucked chicken, ready for oven in 30 seconds each, working at a pace he can sustain all day long. See the video below at Timestamp 49:29 (just before the end of the video).  With 8 people producing 200 birds per hour, that is a productivity of 25 birds per person-hr (ie. 200/8= 25 birds per person-hrs worked).

A chicken hanging in shackles of a chicken processing
machine at a Canadian slaughter plant.

Large Canadian slaughter plants, using the same or similar
equipment, machinery, and chemicals as their US neighbours,
are a marvel of stainless steel engineered complexity, able to
process up to 25,000 broiler chickens per hour.  That is 7
chickens every second.  How can anybody, even the most
dedicated inspector, look inside, outside & all around each
chicken at these blurring speeds?

Joel claims that the biggest and best multi-million $ processing plant owned by Tyson Foods, the largest chicken producer in the world, also produces chicken at 25 birds per person-hr.  Large chicken processing plants in Canada can process up to 25,000 broiler chickens per hour.

So if a farmer with less than $5,000 in equipment can equal or beat a $50 Million chicken processing plant, which solution is the better one?

Before you answer, look at the picture and caption at the right, and read here about the chronic, massive bacterial contamination of chicken sold at Canadian retail stores.  Read here about the contaminated chicken imported into Canada from the US and elsewhere.  Then read here about the unlimited chicken slaughter processing speeds and the resulting worsening of chicken contamination from the Chicken Mafia's messy slaughter process.

Small Flockers are obviously the way to go.

If you are a member of the Canadian Chicken Mafia, and you have some objective facts you'd like to share, to either agree or refute the facts presented above, please post your information below, or I will give you an entire guest posting to state your case.

How much do you bet all we'll hear is dead silence from the Chicken Mafia, or crickets chirping?