A radio talk show host I enjoy listening to likes to advise his listeners to always read the first and last paragraphs of any news article. Allow me to illustrate why that’s so important.
A recent study has found that free-range chickens – a term denoting chickens that were actually able to move and were not rendered motionless due to cramped coops– are more susceptible to food-borne diseases like E.coli than caged birds are.
This is according to a study done by the National Veterinary Institute in Sweden. Sweden is one of the few countries where laying hens cannot be raised in what are called battery cages – cages that share a trait with your average sheet of paper: dimension size (about 8.5 x 11 inches).
The study was initiated after researchers saw an increase in deaths among chickens as chicken farmers were forced to change their chicken-raising habits. The phasing out of cages took place between 2001 and 2004, which is also when this study was conducted.
In the researchers’ analysis of over 900 chicken deaths from 170+ flocks, they found a most perplexing oddity: caged chickens died from far fewer disease-related deaths than free-range chickens, a lifestyle perceived to be much healthier for the average chicken. According to their analysis, the free-range chickens had a higher incidence rate of E.coli-related deaths and bacterial infections overall were about 10 percent higher among the free-rangers than among the caged cocks.
Disturbing find, right? Why bother making sure a chicken is free range if said chicken is more prone to disease?
Here’s why it’s important to read the last paragraph of every report. The one thing that goes unmentioned throughout Sciencedaily.com’s six paragraph report is that the chickens in question went from sterile cages to litter-based housing systems where cleanliness was sub standard. To the researchers’ credit, they point this out, saying that their results may have been skewed by this fact. To Sciencedaily.com’s discredit, they mention this all-important factoid at the end of the article.
In my mind, this fact alone severely discredits the veracity of the study. A free range chicken may indeed be free range, but the term is pointless if that free range chicken is walking in a field of squalor. Or should I say indoor fields of squalor, as these chickens studied were kept indoors (the USDA mandates free range chickens be allowed access to the outdoors).
Very few people read an entire article all the way through, sorry to say. If Sciencedaily.com had put this fact up higher in their story, people would see this study for what it is: junk science. As a result, many people will have read something that they’ll believe is true but is anything but upon further review.
The circumstances under which this study was conducted – among chickens kept in less than sanitary conditions, among chicken farmers who spent their lives raising chickens and performed on only those chickens that died – leaves the researchers looking like real turkeys.
