America's Food Supply

        Perdue is a major chicken processing company located in Salisbury, Maryland. That has been accused of false advertising. The company stated  that they treated there chicken humanly when it was from the truth. In the article "Abusing Chickens We Eat" by Nicholas Kristof published in The New Work Times the author states that Perdue is a hypocrite because they put on there labels "humanly raised" and "cage free". The  author also states that chickens should be treated humanly.



This is how the chicken barns look with limited space. Source

      The author was able to talk to one farmer that raised chickens for the Perdue company. The farmer watched a video of Jim Perdue and how they mistreat the animals and he said "It couldn't get any further from the truth."  The author also talked about how the chickens live in the barns. He described how the chickens are all unable to walk a lot  do to the wait of their big breast. They are also always laying in excrement from other bird that were kept there before which causes them to be featherless.

      Nicholas Kristof wrote in his article "So "cage free" is meaningful for eggs but not for chicken meat. Moreover, Perdue's chickens are crammed so tightly in barns that they might as well be in cages. Each bird on the Watts farm gets just two-thirds of a square foot." I think this quote is the best quote because it describes how the chickens live in the barns.



Kids would play in alleys full of trash. Source 

      In the novel "The Jungle" by Upton Siclair he described how the factories were in bad  conditions for the workers. In 1906 people would just throw their excrement out the window. The factories were full of rats. Where the meat was stored it was at room temperature and rats could eat it. Flies were always on the food.

     During 1906 when the book was published the president at that time Theodore  Roosevelt had read it and sent investigators to check how the meat was being handled. His investigators backed up what Siclair had written in his book so he did something about it. He passed the Federal  Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Thanks to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 the meat now is clean and not rotten. The act prevented adulterated or misbrand meat to be out in the market.

       In my opinion companies should not mistreat the chickens. The barns were the chickens are being held should be clean every time that new chickens are being brought. The chickens should also get a little more space because that's why some of them die because there is not a lot of breathing air.