Shoppers in the supermarket today can buy chicken free of nearly everything but adjectives. It comes free-range, cage-free, antibiotic-free, raised on vegetarian feed, organic, even air-chilled.
Coming soon: stress-free?
Two premium chicken producers, Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary's Chickens in California, are preparing to switch to a system of killing their birds that they consider more humane. The new system uses carbon dioxide gas to gently render the birds unconscious before they are hung by their feet to have their throats slit, sparing them the potential suffering associated with conventional slaughter methods.
"Our system is designed so that we put them to sleep without stress and we kill them without stress," says Scott Sechler, the owner of Bell & Evans. This is sure to appeal to a segment of the chicken-buying public -- but telling them about it presents a marketing challenge.
"Most of the time, people don't want to think about how the animal was killed," said David Pitman, whose family owns Mary's Chickens.
The trick, he said, is to communicate the goal of the new system, which is to ensure that the birds "[...] not have any extra pain or discomfort in the last few moments of their lives."
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