447
Despite the growth promotion antibiotics—zinc bacitracin and macrolide
tylosin—fed to chickens in New Zealand (banned in the European Union) and a
continuing open book on the tide of abuses of even the most minimal standards of
care, there is no empirical data to suggest that all of the campaigns targeting
(“alleged”) cruelty at battery farms have made any inroads into the public consumption patterns. As one researcher has been quoted, “You have to accept that production is industrialized, that you minimize animal welfare and maximize profits so
people can afford to get the product into a supermarket trolley”.
22
For a country that perceives itself as a world conservationist leader in saving
birds, it gives no quarter to the chicken, which, by New Zealand standards, is no bird
at all. This contradiction is not anomalous, nor is it merely New Zealand’s human
nature problem. It is a human problem. As early as 1877, the famed English professor at University College of London Henry Morley (1822–1894)—best known for
his ten-volume English Writers and his Universal Library—wrote a book entitled
The Chicken Market and Other Fairy Tales, with illustrations by Charles H. Bennett
(1828–1867).
23
For his part Bennett had illustrated an edition of The Adventures of
Young Munchausen and The Sorrowful Ending of Noodledoo; an Aesop, Birds,
Beasts and Fishes, The Nine Lives of a Cat, a Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Faithless
Parrot. By all accounts, both Morley and Bennett had strong affinities for animals.
Yet in their collaboration they propounded a lethal, if common, assumption:
Chickens were to be slaughtered and eaten, an emotional disconnect no less thorough and unquestioning as “The extermination procedure in the gas chambers”.
24
Writes Morley, “Though a humming-bird grew to the size of an ostrich, and
increased as much in beauty as in size, it would be no match for one of Ben Ody’s
chickens as those chickens now shone down the dawn. They had crossed the water,
and stood glittering among the dull sand-hills like hillocks of rainbow in the morning rain.” And, upon nearing the market continues, “All the fowls that hither we
bring, Body and legs, liver and wing, We mean to present to the Fairy King”.
25
These readers, the children of those English settlers across New Zealand, grew
up, like the farmer/journalist Oliver Duff, to become part of that vast contradictory
set of conspiratorial preconditions for killer instincts and acts. It was Duff, writing
in 1961, in his masterpiece A Shepherd’s Calendar, who would describe his hopes
of making it through life “without shooting a bird. There will be enough animals
around the Judgment Seat….” And continued, animals “battered, [read: John
Donne]
26
bleeding, and mutilated, to tear my penitence to shreds if they re-member
22 Crop and Food Research Expert, Graeme Coles, cited by Bruce Ansley in his article, “The Secret
Life of Chickens,” Listener, March 16, 2002, pp. 19–22.
23 Cassell Petter & Galpin, London, 1877.
24 See “Auschwitz-Birkenau” Memorial and Museum, http://auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitzand-shoah/the-extermination-procedure-in-the-gas-chambers.
25 ibid., pp. 9, 17.
26 See https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-perso
nd-god.
48.2 The New Zealand Paradox
Despite the growth promotion antibiotics—zinc bacitracin and macrolide
tylosin—fed to chickens in New Zealand (banned in the European Union) and a
continuing open book on the tide of abuses of even the most minimal standards of
care, there is no empirical data to suggest that all of the campaigns targeting
(“alleged”) cruelty at battery farms have made any inroads into the public consumption patterns. As one researcher has been quoted, “You have to accept that production is industrialized, that you minimize animal welfare and maximize profits so
people can afford to get the product into a supermarket trolley”.
22
For a country that perceives itself as a world conservationist leader in saving
birds, it gives no quarter to the chicken, which, by New Zealand standards, is no bird
at all. This contradiction is not anomalous, nor is it merely New Zealand’s human
nature problem. It is a human problem. As early as 1877, the famed English professor at University College of London Henry Morley (1822–1894)—best known for
his ten-volume English Writers and his Universal Library—wrote a book entitled
The Chicken Market and Other Fairy Tales, with illustrations by Charles H. Bennett
(1828–1867).
23
For his part Bennett had illustrated an edition of The Adventures of
Young Munchausen and The Sorrowful Ending of Noodledoo; an Aesop, Birds,
Beasts and Fishes, The Nine Lives of a Cat, a Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Faithless
Parrot. By all accounts, both Morley and Bennett had strong affinities for animals.
Yet in their collaboration they propounded a lethal, if common, assumption:
Chickens were to be slaughtered and eaten, an emotional disconnect no less thorough and unquestioning as “The extermination procedure in the gas chambers”.
24
Writes Morley, “Though a humming-bird grew to the size of an ostrich, and
increased as much in beauty as in size, it would be no match for one of Ben Ody’s
chickens as those chickens now shone down the dawn. They had crossed the water,
and stood glittering among the dull sand-hills like hillocks of rainbow in the morning rain.” And, upon nearing the market continues, “All the fowls that hither we
bring, Body and legs, liver and wing, We mean to present to the Fairy King”.
25
These readers, the children of those English settlers across New Zealand, grew
up, like the farmer/journalist Oliver Duff, to become part of that vast contradictory
set of conspiratorial preconditions for killer instincts and acts. It was Duff, writing
in 1961, in his masterpiece A Shepherd’s Calendar, who would describe his hopes
of making it through life “without shooting a bird. There will be enough animals
around the Judgment Seat….” And continued, animals “battered, [read: John
Donne]
26
bleeding, and mutilated, to tear my penitence to shreds if they re-member
22 Crop and Food Research Expert, Graeme Coles, cited by Bruce Ansley in his article, “The Secret
Life of Chickens,” Listener, March 16, 2002, pp. 19–22.
23 Cassell Petter & Galpin, London, 1877.
24 See “Auschwitz-Birkenau” Memorial and Museum, http://auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitzand-shoah/the-extermination-procedure-in-the-gas-chambers.
25 ibid., pp. 9, 17.
26 See https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-perso
nd-god.
48.2 The New Zealand Paradox