Hippo and Al Report Card: D minus

Ritten by Al (a bird) becuz Hippo is wollowing

Lissin up everywun, this is your chanse to hear the strate dope from me, Al – things you will never hear from Hippo.

You may not remember this, but every new moon, we get evaluated by the counsil of animals. Yes, we got a D minus. I tried to convins Hippo that it wasn’t fair – after all, we were just getting started. But she was having nun of it.

“But we are in the mist of an emerjensy!” I told Hippo

“At least we shood be going in the right direcshun, Al,” Hippo said. “We’re going backwards! Look at this headline.”

Sanderson Farms and Tyson Foods upgraded as coronavirus-related demand sends meat ‘flying off the shelves’

I crinjed. Hippo was rite. Sanderson and Tyson are food jiants – Sanderson Farms is the third largest poltry produser in the United States, prosessing over 10 millyun chickins per week. Ten millyun! And Tyson is the #2 prosessor and marketer of chickin, beef, and pork IN THE WORLD!

What does this mean? I will tell you. It means we are not doing our job. It means the humans are not listening to us! It means we get a D minus. It means we need to speak more plainly!

Let’s talk about chickins. Chickins are birds. I am a bird. I no a thing or too about birds and I’ve bin studying up on chickins. What I have learned has made me angry and sad – yes, both at the same time.

Do you no how sensitive a bird beak is? Probably not. But our beaks are full of blood vessels and nerve endings. If you cut off haff of a chickin’s beak, that hurts. And that’s exactly what the large-scale egg producers do to thare chickins. Thay call it “trimming” as if it’s like a haircut and thay say it’s to keep them from cannabalizing each other. https://www.firstpost.com/living/heres-why-beak-trimming-of-chicks-in-poultry-farms-is-a-senseless-act-of-cruelty-2969954.html

There are about 300 million laying hens in the United States; of these, some 95 percent are kept in wire battery cages, which allow each hen an average of 67 square inches of space—less than the size of a standard sheet of paper. For perspective, a hen needs 72 square inches of space to be able to stand up straight and 303 square inches to be able to spread and flap her wings. There is no room even for the hens to perform self-comforting behaviors such as preening and bathing. http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/05/the-difficult-lives-and-deaths-of-factory-farmed-chickens/

The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow cagemates to search there in vain for cover.

National Chicken Council

I wonder if this has anything to do with why they might fight and peck at each other.

I know that Hippo would want us to visit one of these huge chickin operashuns to get the facts first-claw, so I asked a nearby egg produser if we cood visit – no response so far and don’t hold your breath. Hippo and I will probably have to dress up as chickins and sneak in.

Broiler chickins, or chickins raised for their meet, share menny of the same condishuns as the egg-layers. In addishun, thay are forsed to grow so larje that thay offin have trubble walking becuz their bones were not desined to carry so much wait – not to mentshun that thair hart and lungs can’t keep enuff oxijen sirculating, resulting in hart failyer. According to Farm Sancchewary, “they are still “peeping” the sound of baby chicks when they are killed – even though their bodies have ballooned to the size of giant adult chickens in this short time due to industry practices.” That is why chickin is so cheap – that plus the fact that you subsidize industryal food producshun with your taxes.

The subsidized corn and soy used to feed these chickins is grown in monocultures with spechul seeds from jiants like Bayer and Syngento. If you wont to no more about this, read Our Story “The True Adventures of Hippo and Al.” I wood like to menshun that the excess nutreents like nitrojin and fosfurus frum these crops end up in the water and create dead zones where most aquatic life can not live.

Cyanobacteria bloom in Lake Winnebago

Remember that photo of Lake Winnebago? It looked more like a bowl of pea soop then a lake. My brain is having a hard time with this. You kill the plants and animals that Mother Nature offers freely for food while at the same time expending grate amounts of resorses to grow food that further limits the ability of the Earth to provide. Huh?

And chickins are just the ears of the hippo (as we say on the savanna), or as you mite say, the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the hole life sicles of the concentrated animal feeding operashuns, as well as all the uther cheap ultra-prosessed foods cumming from the giants, like shugar drinks with hi fruktose corn sirip (from the corn) soybean oil, brekfist sereals in fansy packijes, you will find that the jiants are tricking you. Thay are vary good at it. Thay eat munny so thay will do ennything to get yors. But BEWARE! Theze foods cauze obeesity, diabeetes, canser, ded lakes, eroshun, inequality . . .

“Stop!” sedd Hippo. “That’s enuff bad noos for wun day. “Don’t you have sumthing good to say?”

Busted!

As you have probubly gessed, Hippo haz cum out of her wollow and yes, I do have sum good noos – some really good noos. A growing number of humans are working together with natchur and finding ways to grow food that rejenerate the Earth.

Main Street Project is creating a rejenerative sistem with chickins – silvopasture – which means raising animals in forests or trees. Insted of fiteing the ways of life, it works with life and her sistems.

We are advocating for a farming approach that brings back ancient knowledge, wisdom, and techniques that farmers have survived on for a very long time.

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Main Street Project

Pleaze wautch the video. You will lern new ideas, see chickins hoo can wauk and humans hoo are byootiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lInnunqxh0E&feature=youtu.be

And the Fondy Food Senter posts every week on Fasebook telling us how to cunnect with the local farms. Check out thare fasebook paje here: https://www.facebook.com/fondymarket/

Remember wut my frend Charlie, the Beevanjelist says: “‘Know your farmer. Know your food.” It’s the only way to make shur you don’t get fooled by the jiants.