The Matrix Chicken Farm
Love
chicken (after all, they're quite yummy) but are disturbed by the cruelty
in the way the farm-industrial complex raises hundreds of millions of
broiler chickens every year?
Architecture student André Ford has got the solution. All you have to do is convince the chicken to take the red pill:
Ford [...] proposes a "Headless Chicken Solution". This would involve removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken to inhibit its sensory perceptions so that it could be produced in more densely-packed conditions without the associated distress. The brain stem for the chicken would be kept intact so that the homeostatic functions continue to operate, allowing it to grow.
Ford proposes this solution for two reasons: to meet the rising demand for meat, particularly poultry, and to improve the welfare of the chickens by desensitising them to the unpleasant reality of their existence.
After this "desensitisation", the chickens could then be stacked into huge urban farms with around 1,000 chickens hooked up to each large vertical frames -- a little like the network of pods the humans are connected to in The Matrix. The feet of the chickens would also be removed in order to pack more in. There could be dozens of these frames in the vertical farming system, which Ford refers to as the Centre for Unconscious Farming. Food, water and air would be delivered via a network of tubes and excrement would be removed in the same way. This technique could achieve a density of around 11.7 chickens per cubic metre instead of the current 3.2 chickens achieved in broiler houses.
Olivia Solon of Wired UK has the story: Link










