Measure Of A Man

So its been a long long while since I last blogged. Basically my exams is to be blamed for my absence in the blogsphere. Anyway, that’s all finally over and I’m actually back in Malaysia now… for my summer holidays. So something I noticed in some of my fellow bloggers posts were mention of free range chicken and free range eggs. I choose to take no side in the debate on whether free range livestock are better, but I feel its important that some people understand what they are fighting for.

I’ve heard somewhere before that a measure of a man is not in how well he treats his peers, but of how well he treats his inferiors. Haha, yea that’s what the title is all about… it isn’t really about measure any body parts in particular. So yea, I guess in some obscure sense… our live stock are considered our inferiors, and the way in which we treat them is a measure of how good a person we are.



I’ve seen scary pictures about livestock being mistreated, how they are confined to a small space… some barely moving more that a foot a day, and they are also supposed to be pumped full of medicine. The rational behind this is both evil, but understandable. How issit understandable? Well for one thing, our modern society has come to a stage where by eating meat as a form of protein has become a norm. This is certainly different from the stories I hear from my parents’ generation in the past. They always told of stories about how happy they were to have been able to eat chicken only during festive season… and apparently that’s less than ten times a year. Nowadays, we consume a lot of meat, particularly I think Malaysians consume a lot of chicken, because its not only cheap, but it also doesn’t conflict (much) with the halal issue- as most chickens are slaughtered the halal way in Malaysia anyway.

So imagine with the rising number of chicken consumption… is it actually practical to condemn commercial poultry farming and only go free range all the way? Let conduct a little thought process… suppose half the Malaysians consumer an average of two pieces of chicken a day, half of 20 million people is 10 million… and so lets say we averagely consume 20 million pieces of chicken a day. And the standard chicken is usually cut into nine pieces… so 20 million by nine is 2,222,222.22. So lets assume that its 2.2 million. So on average we eat 2.2 million chickens a day which comes up to a grand total of 1.7 trillion chickens a year. And remember this is just ‘if’ half of Malaysia eats an average of two pieces of chicken a day… I’m willing to bet that this amount estimated is probably less. But anyway, with such a huge number of chicken requirements, I guess it only makes sense to grow the chickens commercially.



And the rationale behind keeping the chickens confined and fully pumped with medication is simple, if they are kept confined its easier to round them up when its time to transport them to the slaughter house. I’m not sure if any of you tried to catch a ayam kampung (village chicken) before, but it is very difficult. Imagine how hard it would be to catch 2.2 million free range chickens a day just so that they can be sent to the slaughter house 0.o and the reason why they are pumped full of medicine is to make the grow faster… we would definitely need a lot of space if we wanted to only harvest chickens that grew at a normal rate. I think commercially farmed chickens nowadays take only 45 days to grow, but a supposedly normal growth-hormone-free chicken takes more than 3 months to grow? (correct me if I’m wrong here, cause I’m not too sure of this figure). So commercially, if we farm poultry the ‘cruel way’ we would need to have at any one time 2.2 million times 45days of chicken alive. But if we did it the free range way and not spurt the growth of chickens with growth hormones, we would need to at any one time have 2.2 million times of 90 days of chicken alive. That’s twice the amount. And thing about it… that’s 198 million chickens alive at any one time… cause it takes time to let the chicken grow from the egg stage to the slaughter stage. Imagine free range wise, if there were 198 million chickens alive at any one time and we are to give them one square meter of space to run for every chicken, that would be a grand total of 198 million square meters. Wow… a lot of space if u ask me.

Vegans would fight the battle a different way… instead of requesting farmers to not farm poultry the cruel way and switch to free range techniques. Their solution is much more extreme… and that is we should all give up eating meat all together and just eat vegetables. It is technically possible because we can get our protein requirements from the bean family. So whats the problem here? Apart from the fact that most people aren’t willing to give up meat (me included) there is also the fact of a possibility of a shortage of vegetables if everyone switched to just eating vegetables. Imagine if everyone only ate vegetables, would we have enough space to plant all the vegetables we need?

Space aside, vegetables also bring the huge problem of herbicide and insecticide usage in commercial vegetable plantings. Commercial use of these chemicals in the plantings of vegetation is very harmful to our planet, rising the concern of further polluting our (already quite polluted) water source and also the threat of hastening global warming.

Also a lot of commercial vegetables farmers in the world are now switching to planting crops related to biofuel, and there are mentions of a possibility of shortage in vegetables in certain parts of the world because of this. This is because its more profitable for farmers to plant crops for biofuel, such as sugarcane and corn. These crops are much higher in price due to their demand in making biofuel. So if everyone in the world switched to eating purely vegetables… would there then be a global shortage of vegetables?

My advice is simple, and haha frankly quite rational. As it goes now if you don’t feel bad eating meat (eggs included) farmed the ‘cruel’ way… then you most likely wont be swayed by anything you read. So my advice is for everyone to carry on as they have always been- remain status quo. Because not everyone can afford free range chicken and eggs, and not everyone can switch to just eating vegetables. So… haha I guess there isn’t much meaning to this post, but just to raise awareness on both sides of the debate of free range farming. Personally, I eat free range stuff but do not condemn the supposedly ‘cruel’ way some farmes grow their livestock. Hehe, I like to always remain politically correct. Cheers.

*the figures used in this blog is only based on my own thought process on the number of people eating chickens in malaysia. I did not consult the Malaysian poultry board.

Signing out.