Selling Your Chickens

Dear Small Flockers:

We are an artisanal farmer who grew chicken last year. We still have quite a bit of chicken left that we processed in November. They were grown free range and on a vegetable based feed. They average 4.5 lbs dressed and they are frozen and whole in vacuum packaging. 

Do you know of anyone looking for free range chicken?

We are just deciding how much to grow this year. Any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks,

Dear Artisanal Chicken Farmer:

Thanks for contacting me.

When CFO announced the Artisanal Chicken program, I had a tough decision to make:  stay Small Flock, or become an Artisanal Chicken farmer.  Everybody told me the customers would beat a path to my door, so I applied for and was authorized to raise 3,000 chickens last year, the max. available.

I decided to do grass pastured, free range chickens as I feel this is the best opportunity, the type of chickens people want the most, people are willing to pay a premium price, and have much less competition with the commercial, factory farm chickens that are sometimes sold as a "lost leader" in grocery stores (as low as $1.49 per lb).  Statistics Canada reports the average fresh whole chicken retail price in Ontario in 2015 is $6.69/kg ($3.04/lb).  The average price for 2016 was $6.59/kg ($3.00 per lb.), down an average of 4.03% per year.

In my home town market, the historic market leader for commercial, locally grown barn raised chickens are raised and sold at $3.85/lb in 2016.  I decided to sell our chickens at $4.50/lb, then backed off to $3.85/lb for fresh, never frozen (only available the 2 days after we go to the abattoir).  I now sell frozen chickens at $4.50/lb due to the higher cost to freeze and store them long term.  In Ottawa, they sell grass pastured whole chickens at $6.00/lb. in retail stores.

When I ask other Artisanal Chicken farmers: "Is it tougher to grow them, or sell them?", everybody agrees selling is the tougher nut to crack.

Unfortunately, I too have many chickens raised in 2016 that I still need to sell.  When I calculate that my first flock was available to sell in June 2016, and the last was November 2016, and my next flock thereafter will only be ready in June 2017, so there is a 7 month hibernation when frozen chicken must supply the local demand.  At the rate of sale from June to Nov. 2016, if I project that same rate for the 7 months of winter 2016-2017, I come very close to 3,000 chickens total that will be sold.  That calculation suggest that my freezers will run empty just as the first flock of 2017 is ready to go to the abattoir.  Therefore, maybe I shouldn't worry.

However, projections to the future are very inaccurate.  Rather than trust in this bare hope for the future, I suggest a proactive approach.

Here are some ideas to get your Artisanal chickens sold (* marks the ones I have personally done or tried to do for my farm):

1. * Local radio station spot ads
2. * Google Adwords ads
3. * Internet website
4. * Internet Blog postings (daily or weekly)
5. * Facebook
6. * Twitter
7. * Local newspaper ads
8. * Letters to Editor for local newspaper
9. Op-Ed article in local newspaper
10. * Year-round "farmers markets".
11. * Local seasonal Farmer's Markets and other rural markets
    
12. * Local butcher shops
13. * Convenience stores
14. * Local restaurants
15. * Local hotel restaurants & conference centres
16. Banquet halls
    
17. * Catering companies
18. * Grocery Stores
19. Wedding planners and their clients
20. * Abattoirs that have retail/wholesale meat shops attached thereto
21. * Meat wholesalers
22. * Halal community (must be decided before abattoir, and killed in conformity thereto)
23. * Kosher community (must be decided before abattoir, and killed in conformity thereto; much more demanding than Halal, needs Kosher certification by COR or equivalent)
24. * On-line Internet Marketing
25. * CSA (Community Support Agriculture)
26. * Food Hubs
27. * Organic food stores
28. * Local food stores
29. Farmer Co-ops
30. Community presentations at local halls where you invite the public to learn about sustainable farming, then sample your roasted chicken, and can place an order
31. * Partner with a local appliance store for a 10%+ discount for your customers to buy a freezer to store their own food, then fill it with your produce.
32. Home food delivery route
33. Buy a used propane fired convection oven, put it in an enclosed utility trailer, find a grid of sites (every compass point) around your farm where you can go to sell roast chicken (whole roasted chicken to take home, or 1/4 chicken dinners for one person), advertise that you will be at that site on a regular basis arranged in a sequence that doesn't rob customers today from where you will be next time.  Start small so you are sure to sell out, or you can eat your unsold product excess (or sell it as frozen cubed chicken pieces for chicken Caesar salads or stir frys).  Record the time of each sale.  As soon as you sell out, leave a sign that late arriving customers know they missed out, call this # to reserve a chicken for next week, and head home with your cash.  Based on your sale rate, estimate how many chickens you can sell in a reasonable time on location.
34. Food truck selling quarter chicken dinners at local fairs, hockey tournaments, and other events.
35. * Canada Post flyer advertising a chicken sale with the coupon flyer
36. * Enter your info for free into SFPFC's chicken farmer database, so customers can easily find you (see http://canadiansmallflockers.blogspot.ca/p/small-flockers-database.html )
37. Other

Perhaps Arisanal Chicken Farmers (and/or Small Flock Chicken Farmers) can work co-operatively on solving this marketing challenge.

I ask everybody, Small Flockers and Artisanal Chicken Farmers, to use the comments section below to share their favorite sales & marketing method, or comment on the above.

Arsenic in Canadian Chicken, Round 2

It has been 4.5 years since Canada banned farmers from adding poisonous arsenic to their chicken feed.  Arsenic addition was primarily done by CAFO factory farms of the Supply Management Overlords (ie. The Chicken Mafia) to artificially increase their profits and reduce their personal risk..

I have previously made many posts and inquiries of government authorities about this barbaric practice of adding a known carcinogen and acute poison to feed animals that will eventually become human food (see Arsenic In Canada's Chicken ).

On Nov. 8, 2013 I emailed a number of questions to Health Canada about their surveillance of CAFO chicken to ensure that CAFO chicken farmers actually implemented the arsenic ban, versus ignored it and continued with their evil practice as if the ban didn't exist.

I never got a response from Health Canada, in spite of a few reminders.

I received a comment a while ago on my previous Blog postings about arsenic, asking if there has been any update.  I decided to try once more to get some straight answers out of Health Canada.  Perhaps with the new Liberal Government under Justin, Health Canada would be more inclined to answer.

Therefore, I copied the Nov. 8, 2013 email and sent it off again to Health Canada's Veterinarian Drug Directorate ("VDD") who is in charge of these things.

So far, I have received VDD's apology for their tardiness in answering the 2013 email.  Good first step.  I was told the answering of the email has been assigned to one or more of VDD's "experts".

Agri007 picked up on my renewed effort to get arsenic answers.  This cross posting prompted some additional questions about the arcane historic practice of arsenic additions to chicken feed:

1. Has there been any anecdotal evidence, or formal scientific study that Canadians arsenic loading (ie. food, air, dermal, or water born arsenic intake) has been affected because of the arsenic ban?  Is a study of this issue planned in the future?  If not, why not?
   
   
2. Has there been any anecdotal evidence, or formal scientific study that Canadian human health has been affected (pro or con) because of the arsenic ban?  Is a study of this issue planned in the future?  If not, why not?
   
   
3. Has there been any anecdotal evidence, or formal study of the health status of CAFO chicken flocks (ie. farms that previously used arsenic in the feed) has been affected by the arsenic ban? Is a study of this issue planned in the future?  If not, why not?

Stay tuned.  It will be interesting to see if there is a "Trudeau II" effect on openness, transparency, and accountability by the Federal Government.

Any bets?

Artisanal Chicken: Is it Working?

I have been contacted by a number of people, curious to know my experiences with raising chickens under the Artisanal Chicken program of Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO").

Application deadline for new entrants for chicken farmers to join the Artisanal Chicken program for January 2017 closed as of 2016/09/09.  However, true to form, CFO has changed the rules at the last minute, and has extended the CFO Artisanal Chicken deadline to 2016/09/30.

Therefore if you are an Ontario chicken farmer (or wanna be), there is still time to join the Artisanal Chicken pioneers.  CFO doesn't share all of the details, but I will.  Here is the info you need to make a great decision.

1. In short, as an Artisanal Chicken farmer, CFO has treated me in a friendly, respectful, and reasonable manner.  Lord knows they had reasons to do otherwise to me due to this Blog.  More or less, CFO has left me alone to grow my chickens. If they have treated me well, they will likely do the same for you and other Artisanal Chicken applicants.  Of course, all that can rapidly change whenever CFO unilaterally decides.  Trust takes along time.
2. CFO reserves the right to terminate the program any time they feel like it.  Of course, if CFO did that (or some other big player in the Supply Management system forces CFO's hand for their self-serving monopolistic, crony capitalism reasons), that would leave me and most other Artisanal Chicken farmers financially stranded with no recourse.  I doubt I could scream "Unfair" loud enough to make a difference within a reasonable time.  If you borrow money to do Artisanal Chicken, you will be at suicidal (or significant) risk until you get the loan paid off, likely losing everything if CFO harpoons you, you become a beached whale, and the bank come to collect its pound of flesh.  Knowing (or fearing) CFO, I would recommend against borrowing money to enter the Artisanal Chicken system.
3. After you apply, CFO will come to your farm to interview you and view your farm, barn(s), and infrastructure (eg. water supply, barn yards, pasture, etc.).  My audit was very low key and accepting of where I was staring from.  CFO currently seems to accept you where you are currently at, and makes allowances for you to learn and grow into the program.  You are not expected to be perfect, nor to have everything already in place (eg. your barn doesn't have to be already built before applying).  Of course, CFO could change that approach tomorrow, so be ready.  You should have a reasonable plan for each step that you will have to achieve for your entire first year as an Artisanal Chicken farmer.  I would suggest it would be frowned upon to tell CFO "If approved, I will buy 500 day-old chicks, and once they arrive, I'll figure out what I'll do next", and you likely won't be approved by CFO with this half-baked plan.
4. CFO will likely approve your reasonable plan and application, as there is more quota available than farmers available to fill it. I base that upon CFO extending the application deadline.
5. CFO has a tendency to notify tour acceptance at the last minute, which put me at great disadvantage, requiring me to start construction on January 1st.  It wasn't easy.  Be prepared for that.
6. Once approved, CFO will send you a bill for immediate payment of CFO's fees & levy & license for the entire 2017 year.  Your cash flow for capital purchases will be stretched even thinner by this, but that is CFO's desire to make sure they get their pound of flesh.
7. You may not be able to get the chicks you want, when you want them.  Call your hatchery before you apply to find out the details and get a tentative commitment (eg. if you get approved by CFO, the hatchery will guarantee to supply you the chicks you need).  You may have to order chicks 6 to 8 weeks in advance.
   
    
8. Once you start, be prepared to continue along your plan, assuming all goes according to plan.  If you hesitate at each step, awaiting proof that each step works as you hoped before you move forward to the next step, you will be lost before you get once through.  Plan well, think about all of the things that could go wrong, what is the earliest point you can detect plan failure, and have remedial plans ready for each of those major risks.  Once you have your plan perfected, put the accelerator to the floor and go for it full speed.  You can re-assess further at the end of your first year.
9. Abattoir capacity is likely even more constrained than hatchery supply.  OMAFRA has admitted that they nearly killed all of Ontario's small local abattoirs 5 to 10 years ago, and we're still recovering from their bureaucratic mistakes.  I suggest you have a primary abattoir who will process 66% to 90% of all your chickens, and a backup abattoir who will do 10% to 33% of your chickens.  That way, you have a foot in the door if your primary abattoir has a problem and can't serve you as you need.
10. Due to the long trip to the nearest abattoir, economics said I must raise flocks of 500 birds to keep costs down.  Therefore, I needed a brooder that could handle 500 day-old chicks, and maybe some turkeys and ducks.  I chose a 40 ft. decommissioned sea container.  I made the necessary customizations to create a state-of-the-art brooder.  A

    

    Inside a brooder compartment with 100
    chick who are 2 days old, maintained
    at 35 deg C, 2 drinkers and feed trough.
    An electric radiant heater is shown at
    the bottom of the photo, added to
    each compartment for the first 48 hrs.
    for those chicks who need extra heat.

    
    

    

    Roof vent cut into steel roof of sea container

    
    

    

    Inside the brooder, showing the 6 compartments (4' x 6' each),
    with a 2' wide aisle on the right, and sheets of Silverboard
    foam wall insulation as lids, 3 LED lights in each
    compartment, and fresh air makeup distributed to each
    compartment via a 4" diameter pipe (5 compartments
    currently in use @ 100 chicks per compartment)

    
    

    

    Propane fired hot water heater (from travel trailer),
    and hydronic heating system for brooder.  Each brooder
    compartment has a separate radiant floor heating zone

    
    
    
    

    

    Fresh air inlet to brooder, with hot water heating coil to
    pre-heat air to 35 degC

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. You will need to do some CFO training via watching 1 or more video.  While this is a mandatory requirement, CFO still doesn't have this set up so it can be accomplished, so I have not yet been able to accomplish this step 10 months after CFO approval.
12. You will need to prepare a written farm manual saying how you will meet all of the mandatory requirements of the CFO and Chicken Farmers of Canada ("CFC").  Fortunately, CFO has a template manual as a Adobe Acrobat pdf form.  You can fill in the form on your computer and print it off, or print the blank form and fill it in via pen & ink.  The CFO form is a little flakey (ie. the form has limited space in the fields, and won't print properly if you have a long answer).
13. CFO will do an on-farm audit to see if you are in compliance with your stated methods described in your farm manual.  For example, your manual says what you plan to do, the on-farm audit ensures you are doing what you said you would be doing.
    
     
14. You will need to keep documentation on a daily basis to support and prove that you are following your plan (eg. brooder temperatures, mortality, treatments, chicken feed retention samples or Lot Code numbers, etc.).
15. I have a 17 to 23 hr day when I go to the abattoir, starting at midnight to catch and crate the birds.  You will likely need some help.
16. Your vehicle will likely be contaminated by the live birds on their way to the abattoir, and want a clean vehicle before loading your eviscerated meat so it doesn't get cross contaminated.  I have limited vehicle space, and can't afford to make 2 trips to the abattoir (ie. one trip to take live birds to the abattoir, a second trip to pick up the cold, eviscerated meat).  To solve this problem, I had to design a insulated 4' x 8' x 4' cooler box that is stored in pieces in the back of my pickup truck while I travel to the abattoir with my live birds in crates in my trailer.  Once I have offloaded the birds at the abattoir, I go to a truck wash to clean the empty crates and trailer, offload the crates, build the cooler box in the trailer, reload the crates in the pickup truck box, then await the cooled meat from the abattoir.  I load the cold, eviscerated meat in the insulated cooler box, throw a temperature recorder in with the chicken so that I can prove I kept the chicken at the proper temperatures, throw on the ice to keep the chicken cool for twice the expected travel time (in case of a flat tire or other travel emergency), close up the cooler box, and head home.  A long, hard day!  If you have other animals on farm, you still have to do farm chores before you go, and after you get back.  Think about that and get the help you need.  Don't plan on being Superman.
17. I haven't figured out how to get 500 customers to rendezvous with my trailer full of cold fresh never frozen meat when I return home.  I sell some of it fresh, but am forced to freeze most of it.  Freezing isn't as simple as throwing 300 chickens into a standard home chest freezer.  The typical chest freezer has a limited freezing capacity, and will take up to 2 weeks to freeze the chickens in the middle of the freezer if you load it full of cold chicken.  The chicken in the middle of the freezer will be cold but spoiled (ie. rotten smellly meat unfit for human consumption) by the time it starts to freeze.  To solve this problem, I tightly pack about 30 chickens into the bottom of a large chest freezer.  I then spread 25 kg. of dry ice (-90 deg C) on top of those chickens, then place another layer of 30 or so chickens on top of the dry ice layer.  I continue to add layers of chicken and dry ice until the freezer is full.  I close the lid, and the cold CO2 gas comes blowing out of the freezer as the chickens are rapidly frozen (you need adequate ventilation of the CO2 gas escaping).  Within 12 to 24 hours, the 300 chickens are frozen solid, and the chest freezer's compressor can take over the job to keep the frozen chicken at -18 deg C.  Dry ice is expensive, so I charge 16.9% more for frozen chickens vs. fresh never frozen chickens to help pay for the dry ice.
18. Growing your chickens is probably the easy part.  The hard part will be marketing.  You will have long days at Farmer's Markets, and costs for advertising and marketing.  Be sure to keep those $/hr labor and marketing costs allowances in your planned selling prices.
19. Artisanal chicken can sell at a premium price over the crap CAFO chicken that is sold in the grocery store.  I raise grass pastured, free range, no drug, no antibiotic, no chemicals, no hormone, all natural chicken and sell it at $3.85 per pound fresh never frozen, and $4.50 per lb frozen.  I make more profit when the birds are heavy (eg. 7 lb chickens at $31.50 per bird), but most consumers get sticker shock when the birds are too heavy.  You may find it an easier sell at 4 lb birds at $18 per bird.
20. I will be applying to do Artisanal Chickens for 2017.
21. There will be some people who need the high quality Artisanal Chickens, but can't afford them.  Please consider:
    
    
    •  A discount price to sell some of your chickens to your local Foodbank; or
       
    • Donating some of your chickens to your local Foodbank; or
       

    

    My insulated wood box, 4' x 8' x 4', disassembled, awaiting
    my next trip to the abattoir.  One person can pick up each
    piece, and assemble the box.  Add eviscerated chicken and
    ice, and off you go.  The box is re-assembled with about
    20 screws and a 25' long cargo web strapping around the
    middle.

    • Donate a part of your gross sales or profits to the Foodbank so that those who can afford your chickens help subsidize affordable food for those who can't.

I hope this helps you decide if CFO's Artisanal Chicken is for you.  Please add your comments and experiences, tips, and questions to the Comments section below.

Chicken Consumer Due Diligence

If the Chicken Mafia are surviving and prospering by spewing their propaganda far and wide, what can a consumer do to overcome the lies, half truths, and misleading omissions by the CAFO chicken factory owners and their henchmen?

Consumers must fight back with due diligence.



The above clip from the TV show Portlandia satirizes what well informed restaurant staff must go through to make a sale to overly conscientious guests who must know the provenance of the chicken on the menu.

It's funny because it went to an extreme.  It's sad, because that is what consumers are being forced to do more and more so as to overcome the Big Food propaganda machine.

C4: Canadian Campylobacter Contaminated Chicken

About half of Canada's chicken on retail store shelves is contaminated with campylobacter jejuni.

FoodNet Canada collects food safety surveillance samples at 3 different sentinal sites (Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta) on behalf of Public Health Agency of Canada.  In the 2014 Short Report of FoodNet Canada, they reported:

• "In 2014, Campylobacter and Salmonella remained the most common causes of human enteric illness in the [three] sentinel sites",
• "Campylobacter was the most prevalent pathogen found on skinless chicken breast in all sites with close to one-half of all samples testing positive.";
• "In turkey [farms] in the BC [sentinal] site, Campylobacter was again the most common pathogen found in 2014, as in 2013. Campylobacter was also commonly found in beef and dairy manure samples in the ON [sentinal] site, as in previous years. Campylobacter prevalence in broiler chickens was variable across the [3 sentinal] sites, ranging from 8.7% - 22%.";
• "...the 2014 FoodNet Canada sampling year have demonstrated that retail meat products, particularly chicken products, remain an important source of human enteric pathogens."

Perhaps Canada's Chicken Mafia thinks this level of chicken contamination is OK, because UK's CAFO chicken is 73% contaminated and US CAFO chicken is about 40% contaminated, so Canada's CAFO chicken is in the middle of the pack.

The common denominator across Canada, UK, and USA is their use of dysfunctional CAFO technologies, which causes serious problems in all countries that use CAFO.  Most unfortunately, those CAFO risks spill over to all countries who don't use CAFO.  Everybody on the planet gets impacted by CAFO, whether their country has used CAFO, or not.

Who Cares?

OK, so Canada's chicken is contaminated.  So what's the big deal?  Can't I just wash it off?  If I cook it properly, won't it kill the bugs?

Good questions.  Perhaps you don't have to worry.  On the other hand...

In the 2014-2015 year long study for the UK study of chicken in UK grocery stores , they found that 7% of the chicken packaging was contaminated with deadly bacteria on the exterior surface of the packaging.  I think it's reasonable to assume the same packaging contamination exists in Canada and USA.  Therefore:

• When you pick up the package from the meat counter, those deadly bacteria are now all over your hands.  If you touch your mouth or eyes, you will likely be infected, and can get very sick.  If you touch your child, or your fresh vegetables, now they are contaminated too.
   
• If your package of CAFO chicken brushes up against your fresh vegetables while they're in your shopping cart, you may die from this invisible mistake.
   
• Somebody used your shopping cart before you arrived at the grocery store.  What will happen to you if that prior cart user handled or purchased CAFO contaminated chicken?  In that case, the inside of your grocery cart may be contaminated with deadly bacteria before you begin your shopping.  It isn't enough to sanitize just the handle of your shopping cart.
  
  
• If you put your CAFO chicken into your reusable shopping bag to take it home, the contamination on the packaging exterior (plus any meat juice that oozes out of the package) has now contaminated your shopping bag.  How often do you sanitize the interior of your shopping bags?  Do you keep just one specially marked shopping bag for just CAFO chicken?  If you don't, the next time you go shopping, you may cross-contaminate your fresh produce and kill a family member.
  

  

  A HAZMAT suit, optional
  equipment for buying,
  storing, or cooking CAFO
  chicken in Canada

Have I got you scared yet?

Here are our recommendations on how to buy, store and cook CAFO chicken factory meat. So far, a HAZMAT suit is optional.

If you try to wash the bugs off your chicken, you will likely splash those bugs all over your kitchen counters and anything sitting on them within a 10 ft. radius from the sink.  Each micro drop splashing off the chicken can have enough bacteria to make a person seriously ill.

A scientific study has shown that the 50% probability of an infective dose of campylobacter for humans is approximately 900 cells; thus, the potential for human exposure to the bacteria through cross contamination, poor hygiene, or undercooking in the kitchen is high.

That is why public health officials recommend against washing the chicken before cooking.

Why don't they tell the public that a farmer with a sharp knife can kill and process a chicken with 96% less bacterial contamination than the CAFO chicken factories and their high speed processing lines?

Beyond the health risks, there is nutrition and taste.

Why don't they tell people there are alternatives to CAFO, such as pastured poultry, where no antibiotics are required, the birds are healthier and happier, the resulting meat is better tasting, and the nutrition levels in that pastured chicken is far superior to that produced by a CAFO system?

How Sick Will You Get?

How sick you get will depend upon your prior health, how big of a dose of bacteria you get, the state of your immune system, and how quickly you get the right medical help.

Campylobacter jejuni, has been recognized as a major cause of acute bacterial gastroenteritis in humans since the late 1970s and it is estimated that Campylobacter sp. are responsible for 400–500 million cases of diarrhea each year on a worldwide basis.

Prior to 1992, fluoroquinolone (FQ) antimicrobials (e.g., ciprofloxacin) resistance in Campylobacter was rarely observed in the USA and Canada, but several recent reports have indicated that approximately 19–47% of Campylobacter strains isolated from humans were resistant to ciprofloxacin.

That means it isn't a sure thing that a hospital can cure you of a campylobacter infection by using antibiotics.  If it gets bad, you could die, or have a few feet length of your bowl removed during emergency surgery.

This Blog has previously reported on the mis-use of ciprofloxin by the Chicken Mafia.  All CAFO chicken factories are supposed to be monitored by the supreme Chicken Farmers of Canada ("CFC"), as well as their respective provincial Chicken Mafia boss.  In spite of this alleged monitoring and supervision, more than one CAFO chicken factory was caught using illegal feed laced with this antibiotic; a ploy to maximize that CAFO farmer's profit and minimize their risk, in spite of the added risks to the public from their bad behaviour.  Fortunately, Public Health Canada discovered their plot, found them, and stopped them from continuing to feed this illegal antibiotic to chickens that produce eggs for hatching into meat birds.

The circle closes.  Campylobacter resistance to ciprofloxin is rapidly growing, likely caused or contributed to by the mis-use of this drug by the Chicken Mafia.  Unfortunately, it isn't just ciprofloxin where the mis-use of antibiotics occur.

Public Health Agency of Canada has reported that:

 "each year there are 4000 hospitalizations (range 3200–4800) and 105 (range 75–139) deaths associated with domestically acquired foodborne illness related to 30 known pathogens and 7600 (range 5900–9650) hospitalizations and 133 (range 77–192) deaths associated with unspecified agents, for atotal estimate of 11,600 (range 9250–14,150) hospitalizations and 238 (range 155–323) deaths associated with domestically acquired foodborne illness in Canada."

and

"Key pathogens associated with these hospitalizations or deaths include norovirus, nontyphoidal Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., VTEC O157 and Listeria monocytogenes"

and

"These estimates of hospitalizations and deaths capture only a part of the burden for all pathogens as they only account for acute illness and do not include hospitalizations or deaths related to chronic sequelae associated with the original infection (e.g., Guillain-Barre´ syndrome associated with Campylobacter spp.). Additional work to better understand the burden of chronic sequelae associated with foodborne pathogens in Canada is needed to inform Disability-Adjusted Life Years and cost estimates and facilitate international comparisons."

Those who become infected by campylobacter sometimes develop Guillain–Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease where, instigated by the campylobacter infection, the body attacks the nerves, dissolving the myelin sheath on the nerves, resulting in numbness, nerve tingling, paralysis, and other serious symptoms.  In the worst case, you can no longer breath, just like in polio, so you get placed on a respirator.  Since the widespread vaccination for polio, Guillain–Barré syndrome has become the #1 cause of flaccid paralysis which puts people onto respirators. 

One study found that campylobacter infections caused 30 cases of  Guillain–Barré syndrome per 100,000 persons infected with campylobacter.  The risk of developing Guillain–Barré syndrome is 100 times greater due to campylobacter than all other causes of this disease.

The National Institute of Health says:

• "there is no known cure for Guillain-Barré syndrome."
   
• "Guillain-Barré syndrome can be a devastating disorder because of its sudden and unexpected onset. In addition, recovery is not necessarily quick. As noted above, patients usually reach the point of greatest weakness or paralysis days or weeks after the first symptoms occur. Symptoms then stabilize at this level for a period of days, weeks, or, sometimes, months. The recovery period may be as little as a few weeks or as long as a few years. About 30 percent of those with Guillain-Barré still have a residual weakness after 3 years. About 3 percent may suffer a relapse of muscle weakness and tingling sensations many years after the initial attack. Guillain-Barré syndrome patients face not only physical difficulties, but emotionally painful periods as well. It is often extremely difficult for patients to adjust to sudden paralysis and dependence on others for help with routine daily activities. Patients sometimes need psychological counseling to help them adapt."

In short, if the government allows CAFO chicken factories to continue causing campylobacter outbreaks, the Chicken Mafia are being allowed to play with fire, and it's you and me who get tossed into that fire.

Mis-Use of Antibiotics

As mentioned in yesterday's Blog posting about the MCR-1 fiasco, this mis-use of important antibiotics by CAFO factories has been going on for more than 46 years.

It's about time the government brought it to a full and complete stop.

Unfortunately, the government's current plan is to coast into the next exit ramp, then take a different antibiotic highway (ie. the back roads), so that it isn't so obvious that the Chicken Mafia will continue doing what they do best, screwing and endangering the public so they can maximize their profits.

The Chicken Mafia are already multi-millionaires.  Why do the Chicken Mafia have to put the whole planet at risk so they can earn an artificially higher income?

I guess they feel being a multi-millionaire isn't enough, they want to be a billionaire.

Chicken Traceability

Traceability for our food is terrible to non-existant.  There is better traceability for auto parts than food.  Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada ("SFPFC") leads the way to a new world standard for poultry traceability.  We challenge all other food suppliers to duplicate our solution and follow us, if they dare.

Figure 1:   Label on the chicken sold Farm Gate from my farm.
Click on the image for a full size version.  This label provides consumers full
disclosure on their chicken, from hatching to consumer's fork.  The Internet
link (in this case http://blacksbay.com/farm/flocks/BBF201510002.pdf ) and
the scannable QR Code both give the URL containing all the farmer's info
on these chickens.  Scan the QR code with your Smart Phone, or click
on the link and see how it works; instant disclosure at your fingertips.

If you have a QR code on a food label like that shown in Figure 1 for my farm, you can:

• Scan the QR code using the camera on your Smart phone using a free App on your phone (eg. a Barcode Scanner from GooglePlay or equivalent), or
  
   
• Use WebQR (using your desktop or laptop webcam); or
  
   
• ZXing (crawls a web page looking for an on-line QR code)

Farmers can also hand out hard copies of the document.  However consumers get to the traceability & disclosure document, they can now get full disclosure on the chicken they are thinking of buying.  If done by the Chicken Mafia, that freedom to choose well can be done right at the grocery store meat counter.

Eventually, consumer advocacy groups may pour over the detailed disclosure documents and rank chicken suppliers (eg. Green, Yellow, Red), or the Top Ten for a region, Province, or Canada overall.  This can help consumers quickly decide if they should buy, or keep walking along the grocery store aisle.

Too Much Information?

Some consumers don't want to know the squishy details of what happens to chickens as they grow, and especially when they go to slaughter.  For their sensitivities, too much info makes the meat impossible to eat.  For them, the funny QR code on the label can be safely ignored and put out of mind.  All they have to do is follow the herd (ie. the rest of their family and neighbours) who have done the detailed research and discovered the best chicken to buy.  The sensibilities of the sensitive are protected.

Farmer's Overhead & Paperwork

 Will this proposed system add unfair burdens to small farmers.  I've done it, and believe it is easily managed by all.  The steps are as follows:

Step #	Step Description	Man-hrs	Expenses, $	Total, $
1	Become a member of SFPFC, and obtain a free copy of SFPFC's disclosure & traceability form, and the MS Publisher meat label template.	0.25	1.00	3.50
2	Fill in the form &/or customize the form for your farm	1.5	0.00	15.00
3	Upload the disclosure document to your farm’s website.  If you don’t have your own website, obtain a free Dropbox.com account (or equivalent) and upload completed disclosure form.  Get the link to your document to share with the world.	0.5	0.00	5.00
4	Use http://goog.le to create short URL, then a QR code image to that shortened URL.  Copy the QR code image to your computer.	0.25	0.00	2.50
5	Place the QR code on the label you will apply to your chickens for sale.  Paste the original URL link into the label.  Print enough labels to apply to all your chickens.	0.5	0.00	5.00
TOTALS		3.0	1.00	31.00

The above costs and steps are in addition to the current chicken labeling system of today.  Assuming $10/hr labor rate, if a farmer is producing 300 chickens per year as a Small Flocker, assuming 2.2 kg birds, this traceability system adds $0.047 per kg to the cost of your chicken.  If you are an Artisanal Chicken farmer under CFO's new program, this disclosure form adds $0.0047 per kg. to your costs. If a chicken factory farmer is producing 200,000 birds per year, the farm gate price must rise by $0.00007 per kg.

Once a farmer has done this for their first flock, it becomes much faster & easier for all subsequent flocks to copy & paste the info.

While I am all for reducing overhead as much as possible, to me, this seems to be a reasonable and affordable cost, with huge benefits for consumers.

Canada's Chicken Mafia

Due to a marketing opportunity, CFC and CFO have adopted a "Canadian grown chicken" trademark, but refuse to provide any additional information.  By carefully reading the package, you can find where the chicken was slaughtered, but that the end of the info consumers are permitted to know.  Big national brands market the chicken, but hide which farms were contracted to grow that chicken.  They pretend that all farms, all farmers, and all chicken are identical; a fungible commodity like salt, sugar, and wheat.

Of course, the fossilized multi-millionaire chicken factory owners currently enjoy their secrecy and information vacuum, and don't want educated consumers.  They buy media time to spew their marketing propaganda.  Generalities and platitudes work well when consumers are sleeping and unduly trust their food suppliers.  That is why they have done nothing ever since I originally proposed improved chicken traceability way back in April 2013 (see Blog Posting Trace Your Chicken ).

While propaganda as summarized by Edward Bernays in 1928 was a powerful tool used by the Nazi's Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, and for other evil purposes, it isn't all powerful.  When given a voice, the truth can expose and destroy any propaganda.  I doubt that the Chicken Mafia is more powerful and devious than the Nazis regime.

False Documents

Just because a document happens to state something, it doesn't make it so.  Fraudsters well understand the power of false documents.  However any document is better for consumers than an information vacuum.  Once a document exists, that document can be checked for ambiguities, comprehensiveness, supporting and collaborating evidence from trusted sources, and other evidence or verification.  If a document is found to be silent, ambiguous, or lack comprehensiveness, consumers can complain or refuse to buy.  The complaints and lost sales can continue increasing until the supplier responds by improving the traceability and disclosure document.  Once started, the document can be improved, and then improved some more as customers compare between their current supplier and a better supplier.

If a supplier dares to issue a false or misleading document, the document (and its issuer) will eventually be found out.  At that point, we have a criminal and/or civil offense that can be prosecuted, initiated by a complaint by a government official, a competitor of the fraudster, or a consumer.  A documented traceability and disclosure system can be self policing.

The current vacuum of information can never self police.

Small Flockers Lead The Way

I now have about 400 lbs of chicken, duck, and goose meat for sale to interested persons in my small Northern Ontario community using this traceability system.  With time, I hope other chicken farmers come join me.  If you are a member of SFPFC, you can get a free copy of the form to customize it to your farm.  SFPFC membership has its privileges and advantages!

I believe this proposed traceability is in the best interest of consumers, and is therefore in the long term best interest of chicken producers.

How long will the CFO chicken fossils resist and fight against this trend?

Flawed CAFO Chicken

The Chicken Mafia promote and use flawed CAFO (Cincentrated Animal Feeding Facilities) as the one and only system for raising chickens.

For example, CAFO methods require or strongly recommend "All In, All Out" methods.  This means than the chicken barns are cleaned, scrubbed, washed, and sanitized so as to remove all microbes from the barn.  The empty barn is then filled with day old chicks.  People coming in are required to wear sterile boot covers and coveralls, some CAFO farms mandate that workers wear surgical masks, ensuring minimal or no chance of introducing microbes (both helpful and pathogenic) to the chicks.  The chicks in this "sterile" environment are raised to full age, then all of the birds are harvested and taken to slaughter.  All the birds move together as one flock.

This concept prohibits the separation of a flock into separate sub-flocks, prohibiting the harvesting of part flocks at separate timing.

The "All in-All Out" concept proposes that biosecurity is optimized under the following scenarios:

• Preventing new chicks from introducing infections to an existing flock;
   
• Existing older flocks likely have disease pathogens, for which the older birds have developed immunity or adequate defenses.  These potential diseases from older birds are prevented from being passed to new day-old chicks who have little or no immunity.
• Catching a flock introduces pre-used cages into a "sterile" barn; cages that may be disease laden.  Many sub-contractor persons who have just finished catching a flock at another farm and may be carrying pathogens are introduced into a "sterile" barn.  For those birds caught and immediately slaughtered, there is insufficient time for those caught birds to become ill from the catching process, but the stress does taint the resulting meat.  There is also extreme stress to the birds not caught (they see and hear the screams and flapping of the birds that are caught).  They are also exposed to the crates and the catching crew, and have time for those exposures to start incubation.  When stressed, most digestive and other hormonal systems are dramatically changed and disrupted.  Prior medical conditions and pathogens that had been dormant or in remission suddenly come alive with a vengeance (eg. you tend to develop a cold sore on your lip after being emotionally stressed, lack of sleep, or other illness, even though we usually have adaptive immunity and the virus usually lays dormant within our bodies). The catching process significantly exposes the remaining uncaught birds, and they are left to deal with the consequences, often deadly.

If you drink of the CAFO Kool-Aid offered by the Chicken Mafia, all of the above might seem reasonable at first blush.  However, as you dig deeper, the dysfunction and wrong-headed assumptions in the Chicken Mafia's CAFO fairy tale become more and more evident.

Alternatives to CAFO Dysfunction

The alternative viewpoints against "All-In All Out" are as follows:

Chicken eggs are sterile, free from disease, bacteria, or viruses by definition.  If that wasn't true, the eggs would rot and turn bad long before they hatch during a 30 day incubation at warm and moist conditions.

When the fertile & sterile egg eventually hatches, the chick is also free from any microbes.

A "biome" is defined as the complex family of digestive system microbes that live on the feather or skin of the chicken, and/or inside the gut of every member of the flock.  There are more cells within the biome than the cells that make up the chicken (eg. feathers, brain, kidney, skin, etc.).  If it was majority rule, the biome would win, and the chicken would lose.

In natural chicken life, chickens normally eat chicken poo; their own, their parent's poo, or that of siblings or neighbours.  This especially occurs is CAFO chicken factory barns, as the chickens live on top of the poo for their entire life.  You may feel that is gross, but that is the life of chickens, and exists for good reasons.  It's not only chickens.  Dogs will naturally eat horse manure, and sometimes chicken manure.  Pigs will eat chicken manure, or cow dung.  On feedlots of today, 25% to 75% of a steer's diet is chicken manure or litter (manure and wood shavings scraped from a chicken coop).

On the first pass through the digestive system, only about 33% of the nutrients from the food have been extracted by a chicken's digestive system.  The first pass frees up and makes more nutrients bioavailable.  Re-eating chicken manure ensures a flock extracts maximum value from the available food.

When a chicken eats chicken poo, this also inoculates every bird's digestive systems, helping share and re-invigorate their digestive systems (ie. thing probiotic, similar to eating yogurt with an active bacterial culture),keeping all members of the flock "normalized".  If anybody is exposed to a new microbe, they are all soon exposed to it, so they all develop a shared biome of gut bacteria.

By chicks living under the wing of Mom, they are exposed to the biome on Mom's feathers.

By a chick eating a little of Mom's poo soon after birth (a natural and "planned" occurrence), the chick's digestive system is welcomed to the flock, sharing in the wealth of microbes that the flock has developed over the years.

Flocks with bad or inefficient digestive biomes tend to die off, and are replaced by other flocks with better biomes. Darwin's Law of Natural Selection.

When fertilized eggs are snatched from Mom, and incubated in "sterile" environments, there is no biome available to these chicks.  When the day-old chicks are placed in "sterile" barns, they are again denied a natural biome.

The more perfect the hatchery and the CAFO system enforces their biohazard prevention protocols, the more severe and longer in duration is the chick's denial of their biome birthright.

Figure 1: Image from the movie based upon the life of
David Vetter, the "Boy In A Bubble".  David suffered
from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID),  and had
no viable alternative to his bubble.  Unfortunately, CAFO
chicken farmers choose this type of "biohazard bubble
technology", a questionable approach when many
better alternatives exist for biohazard risks.

Do you remember David Vetter (1971-1984), better known as the "Boy In The Bubble".  David had a congenital disease (SCID) where he had to be protected from every microbe, or die; for David had no immune system.

Why does CAFO chicken technology try to raise millions of chickens inside a biohazard bubble suit?

Would it not be better for all chicks to be allowed to spend some time with their parents, enabling them to receive their birthright biome system from their parents and relatives?

Alternatively, that birthright biome could be cultivated and standardized in the same way that yeast is developed and grown for the bread, beer, yogurt, cheese, and other fermented foods, which is then fed to the chicks soon after they hatch.

Another alternative is the free range or pastured poultry system where the biome is naturally accepted, and shared from one generation to the next by shunning the misguided and dysfunctional systems proposed by CAFO chicken factories.

Dr. Martin Blaser wrote the book Missing Microbes which discusses the growing evidence that modern food and medicine have destroyed the human biome for millions of people, causing or contributing to the growing epidemics of auto-immune diseases (eg. such as Addison's Celiac, Dermatomyositis, Graves', Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Multiple sclerosis, Myasthenia gravis, Pernicious anemia, Reactive arthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren syndrome, Systemic lupus erythematosus, Type I diabetes, etc.), obesity, asthma, cancer, allergies, and possibly many others.

Dr. Blaser discusses the questionable practice of agricultural antibiotic use, and the terrible consequences for humans.  It isn't difficult to extrapolate from biome deprived human diseases in his book, to the CAFO chickens who suffer similar fates in CAFO factory barns.

The biome depletion theory (a.k.a. The Hygiene Hypothesis) for humans has been around since 1989 formally, but has been anecdotally discussed for decades before that.  The Hygiene Hypothesis has been independently studied and judged to be statistically credible based on known evidence of allergies and morbidity in humans.  It is suggested a similar effect can be demonstrated in chickens. 

I am not suggesting that farmers should be lazy and leave their animals ankle deep in manure.  If the pads on the chicken's feet are ulcerated from standing in manure all day, that is not what I'm suggesting, and is unacceptable conditions that should not occur.

For example, Merck Vererinary Manual states:

 "True age-immunity does not occur, but older birds are usually more resistant than young birds because of earlier exposure to infection."

 and

"A species-specific immunity develops after natural infection, the degree of which largely depends on the extent of infection and the number of reinfections. Protective immunity is primarily a T-cell response."

However, if CAFO "Bubble Boy" biohazardous isolation techniques are done in a half baked, slipshod, lackadaisical manner, it might achieve acceptable results; as this would approach what I am suggesting is natural.  The more a farmer perfects and is in full compliance with CAFO "Bubble Boy" biohazardous techniques, the greater the risk to humans, and the greater the risk of catastrophic death rates to the chickens if there is one slip-up by the farmer.  Hence we see HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) that kills one third of the US layers flock across hundreds of CAFO farms.

Doesn't seem like CAFO "Bubble Boy" biohazardous isolation techniques can work too well in the real world.

While the chickens are raised inside their biohazard isolation bubble, they must be fed massive doses of antibiotics on a regular basis to help ensure the profits of the CAFO farmer and better "seal" the biohazard isolation bubble around the chicken factories.  Those antibiotics often create Superbugs, and infect people, often fatally; for the retail customers cannot and will not live in a bubble.  Sooner or later, consumers pay the price for this CAFO Craziness.

Dr. Mercola seems to agree, recommending against CAFO chicken.

Why does CAFO chicken factories insist this flawed approach must be used and further perfected?

Like Canada's Supply Management system, CAFO chicken factories are based on flawed, dysfunctional, and dangerous technologies.

Most small flock farms do not attempt to put chicks into biohazard bubbles.  Our chicks get the biome inheritance of their ancestors.  Small flocks live clean and healthy lives.  There is rarely a need to medicate any individual.  There is never a need for massive, continuous dosing with antibiotics.  There is no need for a sterile biohazard bubble around free range or pastured poultry.