Of course it's a valid point. It's in their commercial interest the the birds are in as good a condition as possible, and are disease free.
Who said anything about the straw being soaked with shit and piss? What are the many horrific things that you speak of?
(Cave Duck, Fri 1 Oct 2010, 10:45, 1 reply, 15 years ago)

Sitting on bedding soaked in urine cause hock burns
Bird kept in cramped conditions end up eating each other. These are two pretty horrible things.

And my original point was that free range chicken tastes better than intensively reared or barn reared chicken. I also said I liked the idea of my chickens being about before being killed.

And so I said that catching a disease off a wild bird is far less of a problem than those problems which do occur in intensive chicken farms, I didn't even mention commercial interests, but the logical choice of the commercial interest IS intensive rearing as you get maximum chicken for minimum time and investment, but once again my point is that 1) it's not very nice and 2) it tastes rubbish compared to free range.
(Bazongaloid, Fri 1 Oct 2010, 10:54, Reply)

What you did is to use one small side point (made by someone who has worked in the industry and who had to complete the avian modules that a fully qualified vet would do) I was adding to the debate and tried to make it appear that it was being used as a justification for battery hen farming when it wasn't.
(Cave Duck, Fri 1 Oct 2010, 11:09, Reply)