116: Poultry Slam 1998
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There are certain conversations that those of us who do not live on farms get into with people who do live on farms where you know, you just know, as the city person or the suburban homeowner, you know that the farm person you're talking to is just thinking the entire time you're talking to them, you are so naive. A lot of these conversations have to do with animals and their deaths. Take this example. The woman who rents the website for our radio show, Elizabeth Meister, was at the annual exhibition run by the American Poultry Association in Columbus, Ohio and here she is, she's standing in a room with 12,000 chickens and she gets into this conversation with an 11 year old girl. I've only been in poultry and waterfowl for a year, I'm more into waterfowl. This is Kamika Overs from Bliss, New York who is at the convention to show some of her own birds. So, so do you friends think it's weird that do they think it's strange that you have, you know, you show chickens and so? No, because they, a lot of people show, they really, they be showing pigs or cows or rabbits or something like that. A lot of people are in school show different things. Kamika and Elizabeth talked for a while and then Elizabeth tried, very, very gently to ask a question that was on her mind. Do you, this is sort of a hard question for me to ask, but do you, do you ever eat them? Yeah, I do. Yeah. And, and doesn't make it really sad when, I mean, do you raise these chickens from like little chicks? Yeah, we hatch them out and then, yep, we get them right from the hen and we eat them a lot. We do raise a lot for eating. And so, so when you're eating this, when you're, when you're cooking up this chicken, you know, that you've raised from being a little chick, do you feel a little bit guilty that you're eating this chicken? No. No. Do you, do you ever eat the chickens that you show? If they're not good for show, the loser's yeah. Kamika was untroubled by this. If a bird has bad feathers or a lopsided comb, it might be a nice bird, but it's not going to win competitions, you eat it. It's life. Those of us who do not live on farms, we divide animals off into those we love and those we eat. In Kamika's world, there's not such a hard line separating the two. You can get to know a bird on an up close and one to one basis and still eat it. An animal's transition from buddy to dinner is a great deal less problematic than it is for us city folks. Well from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's this American life on our glass and every year, during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the highest poultry consumption time of the year in these United States, we bring you a program about poultry, around annual poultry, slam, stories of chickens, turkeys, ducks, birds of all kinds and our relationships with them.
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