My Job on a Factory Farm

I’ve worked on an industrialized chicken farm and have firsthand experience of what goes on in such a typically unhealthy environment. When I was 18, prior to enrolling in university, I took an evening job at a broiler chicken farm that supplied product to a fast food giant.

Why would I choose to do a job like that? For the same reason that countless other people do — I needed the cash and didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I won’t go into detail about the inhumane conditions the chickens lived in, or how many suffered broken legs as my low-paid colleagues and I loaded them into trucks bound for a slaughterhouse.

Let’s just say that I wasn’t able to eat chicken for many months after I quit the job in disgust. These days I occasionally eat organic chicken. But I’m not always convinced that the package label tells the truth. 

I should nonetheless mention that even as little as a few minutes of exposure to the inside of a huge henhouse can be hard on the human body. In my case, it was hard to endure for hours on end the horrible stench of ammonia permeating the poorly-ventilated concrete buildings that I worked in.

In fact, the air was so thick with this by-product of urine and excrement (as well as dust, bacteria and fungal spores), that I would get covered in the stuff. And because this ammonia-saturated haze had the appearance of talcum powder after settling on my face and hair, it would give me a ghost-like complexion. I can still clearly recall the sensation of this acidic, potentially toxic compound stinging my eyes and irritating my throat and lungs. It couldn’t be avoided in spite of the cheap paper facemasks employees were issued to supposedly protect our lungs.

Who knows to what extent the ammonia-dense air polluted the lungs and other organs of broilers living their whole lives in this hellish environment. Worse still, I wonder how much of it got into their flesh, too. It now seems obvious to me that what isn’t good for these animals probably isn’t good for the people eating them, either.

By Marc Davis, Health and Fitness contributor

Marc Davis is an investigative journalist whose health and fitness blog can be found at feelingfantasticatfifty.com If you sign-up for his once-a-week blogs, you’ll also get a free copy of his game-changing mini e-book, Get Lean. Stay Lean!

Why would I choose to do a job like that? For the same reason that countless other people do — I needed the cash and didn’t really know what I was getting myself into