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Source: Jack Duszynski, MEATINGPLACE, 2/17/12
In response to increasing demand for meat, Andres Ford, an architecture student at the Royal College of Art in London, recently proposed a new way to raise chickens: remove their cerebral cortex, affix them to feed machines, and fasten them into vertical grids. Tissue growth would then be stimulated electrically. According to Ford, this would allow for more concentrated production facilities, around 11.7 broiler chickens per cubic meter, as opposed to the current 3.2.
The resulting treatment would also be more humane, as counterintuitive as it sounds, because removing the cerebral cortex desensitizes the birds to their harsh conditions.
He calls his farming system The Centre for Unconscious Farming.
He built his project as an extension of a theory called the “blind chicken solution,” which argues that chickens blinded by accident were less cognizant of their surroundings, and they exhibited less distressed behavior.
The reaction to his project has thus far been shock—and a likening to the movie The Matrix—but Ford insist that provocation in response Ford told Wired.co.uk, “The realities of the existing systems of production are just as shocking.”
No word yet on any commercial development of the concept.
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