Pasture Perfect

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Like ruminants, poultry and pigs raised on pasture also get to enjoy a less stressful life. This is in stark contrast to life in a confinement operation. In the worst facilities, horrific abuses can occur.

Last year, I toured a chicken "grow-out" operation — the industry term for a facility that raises chickens from day-old chicks to maturity. The husband and wife who ran the operation were contract workers for a giant conglomerate poultry producer. The couple dutifully followed all the rules handed down by the conglomerate. Indeed, they ran such a tight operation the conglomerate had designated them the second-best grow-out operation in the state. Yet if consumers had to walk through the shed before buying their chicken, my guess is that sales would plummet.

I toured the operation just days before the birds were ready for market. There were 10,000 chickens crammed into each long shed, taking up every inch of floor space. When I looked down the shed, I saw a continuous carpet of white-feathered birds. I couldn't take a step without having to nudge chickens out of the way.

The chickens were sitting on a deep bed of litter. It had been fresh when the newly hatched chicks arrived, but it had not been changed in the seven weeks it had taken them to reach market size. The day I visited, the level of ammonia had risen to almost intolerable levels. I felt as if my head had been plunged into a diaper pail. The chickens were breathing air that was less than 6 inches from the litter, so the fumes must have been far worse for them.

Although I found the whole scene repellent, the U.S. government and the poultry industry do not consider these conditions abusive. It's simply the most cost-effective way to raise chickens. In a matter of days, those very birds would be slaughtered, plucked, cut into pieces, wrapped in glimmering plastic and affixed with a label proclaiming they were "fresh from the farm" and "Northwest grown."

I no longer buy commercially raised poultry, no matter how attractive the price. I won't buy animals that have been forced to breathe toxic amounts of ammonia. Fortunately I have an alternative. The chickens and turkeys I now eat come from a nearby farm where the birds are raised outdoors on organic pasture. As in nature, the birds are allowed the dignity of breathing fresh air and foraging for greens. Equally important, they have room to chase bugs, preen and sprawl outside on a sunny day. In other words, they get to be chickens. I pay twice the grocery store price for these plump, juicy birds, and I consider it a bargain.

Good for the Planet

Raising animals on pasture is far better for the environment. One reason is obvious. In a feedlot, lots of animals deposit their manure on a small amount of bare land. When it rains, manure leaks from the piles and pollutes the nearby land and groundwater. When the manure piles up too high, it has to be trucked from the feedlot and deposited elsewhere. Given lax government regulations and the high cost of transportation, "elsewhere" is often the closest available patch of land. Manure in small quantities is an excellent fertilizer; the lush green grass on pasture-based ranches is a testimony to this fact. But in excessive amounts, manure acts as a pollutant, leaching nitrogen and phosphorous into the soil, surface water and groundwater. It is common for land surrounding large feedlot operations to be burdened with too much manure.

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