“The Toledo Blade’s April 28 editorial ‘Stomach-Churning Cruelty’ sounded more like a page out of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ playbook than a newspaper editorial and is an insult to Ohio’s hard-working animal agriculture community,” said Tom Super, NCC’s senior vice president of communications, in a Letter to the Editor, available here.
“The fact is that our national broiler flock is as healthy as it has ever been. It’s simply not true that chickens cannot walk. Leg problems are much less prevalent than they were 20 years ago because breeders are selected for leg strength and overall skeletal health, not just growth rates,” Super pointed out.
“Raising 80 million chickens for meat in Ohio directly and indirectly employes almost 30,000 Ohioans, with a total economic impact of $6.6 billion annually. But farmers and producers know that impact should never come at the expense of the welfare of the birds,” Super said.
Super also pointed out that no commercially available chickens are ever genetically modified and today’s chickens are healthier, larger, and grow faster as a result of better breeding, nutrition, housing, and veterinary care without the use of hormones or steroids.
The industry is working to do a better job of providing more information on how our food gets from farm to table, Super said, which is why the National Chicken Council has launched http://www.chickencheck.in/inviting consumers to take a look at the work the industry is doing to provide, safe, healthy, and sustainable food.
“We need to be working together to be producing health, affordable food for everyone, not vilifying productions systems at the expense of others,” Super said
