Sure, we deal with a lot of issues here at Vital Signs Blog -- usually issues of faith and freedom, culture and bioethics, economics and politics. But that doesn't mean that I want to leave out completely the world of poultry!So, with my apologies for not paying enough attention to this matter in the past, I'll try and catch up today with this quick review of Chicken News.
* There's a whole lot of talk going on about raising chickens in urban settings. Whether it's because consumers are looking for an economic advantage (growing their own meat and eggs) or because they want a superior product than what they've been buying at the stores, chicken coops are being set up in towns all over the country. And, naturally, that means government interference. Here are stories, for instance, from northern Michigan; from Dubuque; from New Haven, Connecticut; in Portland, Orgeon; from Overland Park, Kansas; and from Iowa City, where it seems both nuclear weapons and roosters are banned from citizen use.
In fact, in almost all of these news stories, government bureaucrats and city council members are severely limiting or prohibiting altogether the plans of consumers. And they're using the most unscientific, specious arguments to defend their actions. But then, that's modern government for you -- doing everything it can to wring from its citizens any sense of independence and self-sufficiency. Sigh.
* Here's an interesting story that comes from my friend Quint Coppi's alma mater. It describes a project at the University of Connecticut in which researchers are recording "every cluck, bawk and pok" in the barn in their dedication to learn the language of chickens.
...In a pen in UConn's chicken house, Otu-Nyarko has spent hundreds of hours recording the birds. He uses sound engineering software to analyze the recordings, the pitch, loudness, and intensity of the cries and takes notes of what was going on in the pen at the time.
Background noises are edited out, such as the moo of a passing cow and non-vocal chicken noises, such as the flapping of wings. What is emerging, the researchers say, is evidence that chickens have different vocalizations for different situations...
The UConn researchers say the creation of a black box for chickens is perhaps five years off.
* From China comes news about restaurants in Guangdong and Chongqing which have been serving chickens purposely killed by being bitten by poisonous snakes. Customers claim it makes the meat delicious but officials are putting a stop to the practice anyway.
* From Royse City, Texas comes news of a massive "chicken spill" after a Pilgrim's Pride truck overturned on Interstate 30 in the early morning hours. Hundreds of chickens didn't make it but hundreds of the rest just huddled up together and hung around the scene. The driver was not hurt in the crash but it messed up Dallas-bound traffic pretty good for about four hours.
The police chief (a 30 plus year veteran cop) said he'd never encountered an accident scene quite like this one. "I've seen cattle and chickens and stuff like that before," he said. "But never this many chickens."
* And finally, here's a quizzical judicial ruling from Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Richard J. Thorpe -- "Horn honking per se is not free speech." Hmm. Does this item legitimately fall into the category of Chicken News? It does. See why in this comically-written story from Mark Rahner in the Seattle Times.
