Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
I REFER to Wednesday's report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart'.
Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) commends the farm owner's attempt to create a less stressful atmosphere for the chickens. However, we wish to highlight that the environment in which the chickens are housed still appears far from ideal.
From the photograph, it is clear that there is significant overcrowding. This is incredibly stressful for chickens. In the wild, chicken flocks have hierarchical systems and a strict 'pecking order', with some birds dominant over others. However, this only works for flocks of up to 90 individuals. Studies have shown that in groups any larger than this, the pecking order breaks down, resulting in extreme aggression.
Furthermore, chickens become agitated if they cannot act on their natural instincts. In the wild, they feed by scratching in the earth for worms and insects. They enjoy stretching their wings, basking in the sun and having dirt baths. They like to roost in lower branches of trees. These are natural needs of chickens, stemming from their forest bird ancestors.
On today's modern farms, all this is usually taken away from them. The chickens even have no choice over what they eat, fed an unnatural concoction of food. They will probably never see daylight, until the day they are taken to slaughter.
It is revealing that Mr Kwek Theng Swee mentions that the music calms the birds, acknowledging that conditions on the farm can be stressful. Indeed, considering the evidence above, the chickens are clearly in a highly stressful and unnatural environment.
Sadly, overcrowded, unnatural conditions are the norm on today's intensive factory farms, where animals are no longer treated as sentient beings, but more as meat, egg and milk 'machines'.
But it does not have to be this way, and more humane methods of farming are possible. For example, some farms in Brazil and China are participating in the Model Farm Project. This aims to establish an international network of viable and sustainable model farms, where the welfare of the animals is given high consideration.
Ultimately, it is high demand for cheap animal products that fuels the intensive farming of animals. Therefore, the responsibility falls on us as consumers to demand more humane methods of farming, if we wish to reduce the animals' suffering. We can do this by buying only free-range meat and eggs, and writing to supermarkets to request such products.
Consumers may also consider reducing their meat consumption, so the need to raise farm animals so intensively is reduced.
Acres hopes that farms in the region will move towards adopting farming methods which are more humane, such as those of the Model Farm Project, and that consumers will use their purchasing power to help reduce the suffering of farm animals.
Amy Corrigan (Ms)
Director, Cruelty-Free Living
Acres
Doing good to animals is great, but isn't it better that we first do them no harm?
Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
WEDNESDAY'S report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart', is ironic.
No amount of air-conditioning, pricey herb feeds, mood lighting and Mozart can compensate for the pain and suffering a chicken, or any animal for that matter, undergoes before it is slaughtered.
The plight of chickens which are bred in captivity for the sole purpose of being eventually slaughtered, begins from as early as when they are chicks. They have to be de-beaked and have their wings clipped - to prevent them inflicting injury on their fellow chickens.
Chickens bred in factory farms suffer cramped living conditions and endemic diseases. They are given powerful cocktails of steroids and antibiotics engineered to accelerate growth, to shorten their lives and hasten their harvest.
While the antibiotics suppress disease among the animals, their use leads to the emergence of newer and more powerful strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which are, more than ever, able to transcend animal-human borders.
Feeds fortified by Cordyceps and cultured lactobacillus underscore the inefficiencies of meat sources of food.
A lifetime of fortified fowl feed - anywhere from four to nine months - translates to only a few days of human meals without any assurance that such fowl feed fortification passes on greater nutrition down the food chain.
If such nutrients can withstand the rigours of slaughter and cooking, just imagine the avian virus and other contaminants that must be surviving the transition equally well.
Expending land, water, nutrients and energy for lighting and music on animals means less of such limited resources are available for man's own benefit.
Why not deploy these directly for mankind instead, to optimise them while reducing methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions and waste by-products which poison water supplies and necessitate expensive treatment plants?
Doing good to animals is great. Isn't it better that we first do them no harm?
Vijay Kumar Rai
Chickens tuned to Mozart: Questions on feed
Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
IN RESPONSE to Wednesday's report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart', I have several questions:
# How much cordyceps do these chickens eat? Cordyceps are no 'chicken feed', costing several hundred dollars per tahil (approximately 38g). So even if just one tahil is added to each tonne of chicken feed, this minuscule amount would sharply raise costs.
From reading the report, it seems the chickens do not actually eat cordyceps, but some laboratory-produced powder. This powder may well contain the so-called active ingredients in cordyceps, but is still not the real thing.
# Are these chickens still fed antibiotics? Cordyceps (and lactobacillus in the case of Sakura chicken) are said to be a substitute for antibiotics. Does this mean the chickens are no longer given antibiotics, or just given less? And are they given growth hormones and other drugs?
# How much of the beneficial compounds found in cordyceps is passed on to the chicken? This is the only question raised, but still not answered, by the report.
# What is the real price of a cordyceps chicken? Right now, it is sold with a packet of herbs but there is no way to tell how much the herbs cost. Will farmers and supermarkets sell the chicken separately? Or is the pack of herbs being used as a ploy to further inflate prices?
Finally, some questions about farmed fish, which the report states are fed 'trash feed - discarded kacang putih (nuts) and stale bread'.
Are these fish healthy? How can they be if they are raised on a diet of stale and spoilt food, including possibly rancid nuts whose oils are very toxic? Does this affect the amount and quality of, say, omega-3 fatty acids, which fish and seafood are supposed to be rich in?
What are the long-term health effects of eating farmed animals, fish and seafood that are sick or sickly? If, in fact, cordyceps chicken does impart the benefits of cordyceps, does it not follow that 'trash feed' fish will also impart the harm of spoilt nuts and stale bread?
There must be regulatory controls over what farmed animals are fed. Because, ultimately, we end up ingesting what these animals eat.
Richard Seah
Shedding light on cordyceps chicken
Straits Times Forum 14 Sep 09;
I REFER to last Friday's letter by Mr Richard Seah, 'Chickens tuned to Mozart: Questions on feed'.
'The real thing', commonly known as the cordyceps caterpillar, is a form of parasitic fungus, Cordyceps sinensis. It is grown in a kind of worm, where the fungus cordyceps eats the flesh which gives it nutrients and enables it to grow. Thus the nutritional and health value of cordyceps come from the fungus rather than the worm.
With 10 years of research, AP Nutripharm has developed a proprietary cordyceps fungus CS-X100, originally isolated from the Qinghai-Tibet cordyceps caterpillar, together with a patented cultivation process to grow cordyceps in Singapore. AP cordyceps has been offered for human consumption since 2005, and the quality is as good as top-grade Qinghai-Tibet cordyceps caterpillar, according to laboratory testing data. As home-grown cordyceps is much cheaper than the imported variety, chickens can be fed sufficiently to derive benefits.
Except for the European Union, antibiotics or antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) have been added to animal feed since 1946 to help food animals grow faster in most agricultural nations in the world, despite severe restrictions by the authorities.
AP has made a great effort for years on the study of its cordyceps ingredient to replace AGP in food animal feed. From farming trials in different countries, AP cordyceps can function as well or even better than AGP for growth, feed efficiency, health conditions and mortality in poultry farming. Laboratory reports also indicate that cordyceps chicken meat is free of antibiotic residues.
AP cordyceps can also improve the quality of meat and eggs. From laboratory testing results, fat and cholesterol are much lower while collagen and the flavouring IMP are dramatically higher in cordyceps chicken meat and eggs than in normal ones. So far, one key nutrient in cordyceps - cordycepin - is proven by testing to be passed onto the chicken.
Limited by scientific methodology, we have yet to determine exactly how much of the beneficial compounds are transferred. Generally speaking, large components such as protein and polysaccharides would be decomposed in the digestive tract, while small beneficial components like cordycepin are likely to be carried by the chicken and egg.
Dr Mark Xu
AP Nutripharm
