Yep, its been on the news a lot over the years and its basically a never ending cycle. The human population is growing at a high rate. Battery farming chickens is just one example, and honestly those chickens have seen better days, they are fed all this medicine for muscle growth. They become so fat beyond what their legs are capable of handling and hence have to suffer a lot of pain.

www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southwest/series6/chicken_run_battery_hens_free_range.shtml

I am not still green enough to think the meat I eat came from a smiling sheep in a field full of sweet green grass and butterflies playing about the heads of the lucky animlas grazing there...

But...

I will go without eggs and chicken if I cant verify it was free range, I stopped eating Macs, Burger King, KFC etc about 2 years ago because of this very topic... and again dont get me wrong... I miss my quater pounders badly!

I have one simple view... If we are going to kill animals to eat them, the very least we can do is give them the best life we can afford to while we grow them. To me that is nothing more or less than basic human decency.

You dont HAVE TO eat meat. I like it, I eat it and I will continue to... but I would survive without it, like we all would. So I try to ensure the meat I eat is as friendly to the animal as possible... as impossible as that is.

I simply wont eat anything that I KNOW has been treated poorly.

I try to make sure all the meat I buy came from normal farms where the beef runs around on the fields and is not farmed the way you mentioned some of the chicken are.

I don't think it's all that healthy for me to ingest meat that came from growth hormones.  It's just not all that apetising to me.

Originally posted by Razorback

I am not still green enough to think the meat I eat came from a smiling sheep in a field full of sweet green grass and butterflies playing about the heads of the lucky animlas grazing there...

But...

I will go without eggs and chicken if I cant verify it was free range, I stopped eating Macs, Burger King, KFC etc about 2 years ago because of this very topic... and again dont get me wrong... I miss my quater pounders badly!

I have one simple view... If we are going to kill animals to eat them, the very least we can do is give them the best life we can afford to while we grow them. To me that is nothing more or less than basic human decency.

You dont HAVE TO eat meat. I like it, I eat it and I will continue to... but I would survive without it, like we all would. So I try to ensure the meat I eat is as friendly to the animal as possible... as impossible as that is.

I simply wont eat anything that I KNOW has been treated poorly.

I can't disagree with you, I stopped eatin at fastfood with that sort of meat quality for two reasons, one a somewhat legitimit fear of being poisoned due to choices of my own(I will not go into detail but some people like en1gma for example might get this).
 

Two I can cook not just cook, but I actually thing of it as a hobby