The Chicken Truck

It left a lasting impression.  It was one of those very hot humid July afternoons when the truck full of chickens loaded in wooden crates rolled along in the other lane.  As we stopped together at the traffic light I could not help but see dead chickens piled up in some of the crates.  It was not hard to imagine what life was like deep inside the stacked up crates.  More dead chickens.  The traffic flow kept me behind the truck until it pulled off the road and into the place where chickens go before they make it to our tables. 

 

It took away my appetite for chicken.  Some of these protectors of abandoned pets should add these chickens to their list of abused animals.  The sight of chickens suffering from deadly heat is not a vision that goes with culture's consumption of tenders, nuggets, strips, and white or dark meat.  The problem is that most of us are too far removed from the source of the food we eat.  Most of us who devour the fast food chicken would never mistreat or abuse an animal, but we just never see and never take the time to understand the real cost of getting food to our table. 

We have been conditioned to accept the abuse in order to get our appetite satisfied.  In this conditioning there is a lack of respect for another living creature which is surely something the Lord God never intended when He put us altogether in the Garden called Eden.  Becoming a vegetarian is not really the answer.  The answer seems more like something which comes from within us as we view our place in the created order.  Life is precious whether it is ours, another person's, or another creature that God has created and to ignore that basic truth takes us into a mindset where we end up closing our eyes to what would be intolerable in our backyards.