Insufficient support measures for the live poultry slaughter ban: over a thousand free-range chicken farmers take to the streets in protest
Lead photo by/munch, text photos by/Lin Hui-chen, Ho Hsin-chieh
One month after the ban on slaughtering live poultry took effect, uneven distribution of electric slaughterhouses has made it impossible for chicken vendors to keep doing business. More than a thousand free-range chicken farmers went to the Council of Agriculture this afternoon to protest, demanding that Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji come out to face them, shouting "killing the chicken to get the eggs, officials driving the people to rebel" and "Chen Bao-ji really wipes out chickens." The protesters pelted the Council of Agriculture with eggs and clashed violently with police; some people were left bleeding from head wounds on the spot, and the scene briefly spun out of control. The chicken farmers demanded that the government: set up public small-scale slaughterhouses in every township and town, and suspend enforcement before the supporting measures are fully in place. But the Council of Agriculture firmly stated that the ban on slaughtering live poultry has been promoted for ten years and it is impossible to reverse course now.
Poor quality of electrically slaughtered chickens leaves vendors struggling to survive
Nearly three thousand chicken farmers, chicken vendors and people in free-range chicken-related businesses gathered at the Council of Agriculture this afternoon to protest that the ban on slaughter was rolled out hastily without considering the uneven distribution of electric slaughterhouses and the poor slaughter quality. Miaoli chicken farmer Lin Chien-li, who raises 200,000 specialty free-range chickens, said that on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival, demand for chickens surges and they must be sent to six slaughterhouses, yet some chickens had already rotted and turned black by the time they were electrically slaughtered, while the slaughterhouse offhandedly said the ice-making equipment had broken down, causing him losses of more than ten thousand yuan.
A chicken farmer from Tainan also said helplessly that he used to be able to sell 10,000 quasi-free-range chickens a day, but after the slaughter ban was implemented, sales dropped to less than a quarter; normally quasi-free-range chickens should be sold once they reach about 4 or 5 jin in weight, but now they are often raised to more than 6 jin, and just the feed costs an extra 20,000 yuan a day, forcing him to cut prices to sell the chickens, "I can barely go on."
