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Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

That's not how many people see it today. A video of a chicken being killed and de-feathered by any means causes a very harsh reaction in a large percentage of the population.

The use of the organic label is to distance people from this imagery by constantly repeating the propaganda that everything is being done 'nicely'. However, actually showing any kind of killing, no matter how nice, destroys that propaganda. The key trick is to use the correct words to make sure people do not conflate what they are eating with anything negative, and the organic label is part of that.

When you go deeper and attempt to explain how the killing is better, you simply open the audience to the fact that there is still killing being done. This is the wrong approach for the target market. It's better to distance the brand from the actual realities as much as possible.

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People are only shocked by death because we live in a creche society that attempts to insulate us from it. How many times do you think the average person has seen a dead human body? Beyond that, how many times has the average person witnessed the death of anything more substantial than an insect?

We fear our own deaths because we've forgotten our true nature, so we've attempted to banish the specter of death from society as a whole. I'm willing to bet people who have this reaction to the death of a chicken are being brought in contact with their own mortality, and that scares them. Given that we are all going to die, we should get comfortable with death rather than hide from it.

Will be interesting to see how this argument may be affected by life extension technology and if natural death is ever cured.

People prefer to be infatuated with immortality/longevity and I imagine working cryogenics would be an absolute market success with those insulated people.

When it's being de-feathered, the chicken is dead. Why should this either affect people's reactions? Or, given that people are irrational and will react to the 'suffering' of a chicken's dead body, why should it be shown to the public as a component of the process? It's not 'unkind' to the chicken.

Check out how chickens are treated while they're alive and get back to me about cruelty.

Hint: they don't run around in happy green fields.

> Hint: they don't run around in happy green fields.

Some of them do. I actually check the code on eggs before buying to make sure I'm getting those from free-roaming chickens.

No, they do not, even if they're so-called "free range". I don't know about the EU, but in the US that term is marketing bullshit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range#Free-range_poultr...

EU regulates what conditions "free range" has to meet to be called like that. I am sorry that it's different in US.

The code on eggs?

Every egg needs to be marked in the EU, to indicate the method of production (organic vs. free-range vs. cage) and country of origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_marking

Thanks!

Some do run around in happy green fields. That's what the step rating on the meat packaging at Whole Foods can tell you.

No, even so-called "free range" chickens do not. It's a bullshit marketing term in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range#Free-range_poultr...

Not to mention that farmed chickens are bred to be so fat they can barely walk anyway: https://www.wired.com/2008/02/chickens-cant-w/

My mom, for the most part, won't eat anything my dad/brother hunts... she prefers the stuff already packaged at the store, that she doesn't have to think too much about. She'll eat freshly caught fish, but not with the head on, and won't watch it being prepped.

Me, I figure there's all sorts of tasty critters in the world and I'm willing to try every one.

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