Wednesday, March 17, 2010
As I was driving on the NYS Thruway this afternoon I came up on a truck that had bits of white fluff flying out of the back... when I passed it I saw why, it was filled with cages crammed full of chickens. I wish I'd thought to grab my camera and snap a couple of photos, but I was too busy thinking about how much it must suck to be those chickens... but here's a photo I found online that gives a pretty good idea of what it looked like, except the one I saw was much larger and covered over the top.
image courtesy of webshots
I was interested to find that in addition to this seeming like a fairly cruel way to transport chickens, there are also possible health risks involved. Apparently researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found increased levels of bacteria and in particular antibiotic resistant bacteria on and in cars that travel behind open-air poultry trucks. No great surprise, really, since many chickens have antibiotics added to their feed and it was clear that the truck I came up on was leaving plenty of material in its wake. I'm glad I decided to pass instead of staying behind the truck!
JMH
