Prison Chickens Poisoned Eggs - Dr. Karen Davis

Publication Date: Jan 30 2009 | ISBN-10: 1570672296 | ISBN-13: 978-1570672293 | Edition: 2nd

The original Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs became a blueprint for people seeking a coherent picture of the poultry industry as well as a handbook for animal rights advocates seeking to develop effective strategies to expose and relieve the plight of chickens. This new edition tells where things stand in a new century in which avian influenza, food poisoning, global warming, genetic engineering, and the expansion of poultry and egg production and consumption are growing concerns in the mainstream population.


From Library Journal

Former English professor Davis is founder and president of the nonprofit organization United Poultry Concerns. After introducing readers to a brief history of poultry farming and the natural and social lives of chickens, Davis focuses on the egg and broiler industries, primarily in the United States. This is followed by a chapter on slaughter, which provides more gruesome detail than some readers will find comfortable. In the final chapter, vegetarianism, especially veganism, is promoted as the only effective solution. As one might guess from the title, chickens are considered from an animal-rights perspective, and this publication is intended as a consciousness-raising expose of what Davis sees as a cruel, obscene, and morally handicapped industry. There is not much new here, but the author does a good job of drawing from a wide variety of poultry science, animal-rights and other literature, including Page Smith and Charles Daniel's marvelous The Chicken Book (LJ 7/75), to make her case. For animal rights collections and curious patrons who wonder where their eggs and chicken nuggets really come from.?William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames


From Booklist

Many Americans have made the choice to eat less red meat. For some, it is simply a health decision; others are choosing to become vegetarians for ethical reasons. Another factor is that books such as Jeremy Rifkin's Beyond Beef (1992) have exposed unsanitary processing conditions and alerted readers to the environmental consequences of raising and maintaining large cattle herds. Davis now targets those who eat chicken, turkey, or eggs with her scathing indictment of the poultry industry. She is president of United Poultry Concerns, an animal rights and animal welfare advocacy group, and she has previously written a vegetarian cookbook, Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey (1993), featuring "alternatives to traditional poultry and egg recipes." Upbraiding those who breed and raise poultry, Davis documents the inhumane conditions of factory farming, explicitly detailing the lives and deaths of battery hens raised in tiered brooding trays and of broiler chickens. She also charges that so-called free-range chickens fare no better. Bolstered by unyielding conviction, Davis argues her case with passion. David Rouse