Transcriber: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Jenny Lam-Chowdhury
When I tell people I have an animal sanctuary,
many think it is a wildlife sanctuary.
Some think it is a dog and cat rescue center.
When I explain it is called "A Poultry Place,"
and is a refuge for chickens, ducks, and turkeys,
many are surprised.
To many people, the chicken, the duck, and the turkey
represent food,
not an animal you'd give sanctuary to.
As a society, we grimace when we hear about dogs and cats
being used as meat in other countries,
and [when] we see those images of whales being hunted down in the ocean
to be served up on a plate.
At the same time, we cut into a chicken breast,
carve up a turkey,
and go out to get some barbequed Peking duck without a second thought.
Most of us don't consider the animals we eat
in the same class as the animals we live with.
You pet dog, you pet cat -
very different to the animals you eat.
For most people,
their encounters with poultry are when they're in the supermarket shopping
or when they sit down to dinner.
Us, humans, have made a great art at the disconnect
about what it is we actually eat.
I've always been an animal lover.
As a little boy, I used to collect newspaper articles about animals
and I'd watch TV documentaries about animals.
I had lots of pets and I really wanted to be a vet when I grew up.
I never made the connection between the food I ate and the animals.
In fact, I lived in ignorant bliss for 25 years,
before I started putting two and two together
and finding out about how my food was produced.
I think it's karma in a way that I know share my life
with some of the survivors of the poultry industries.
Before I stopped eating animals, chicken was my favourite meat.
I loved eggs, and I didn't care how they were produced.
If duck was on the menu, that's what I'd order.
And turkey was made for a great sandwich.
Poultry are the most exploited animals in Australia and indeed the world, by humans.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization,
more than 90% of the land-based animals,
slaughtered for humans each year,
are chickens.
And ducks are the next most slaughtered.
I don't know what shocked me more
as I began to learn about the food I loved.
That chickens can be kept in cages to lay eggs,
and each only has a space of A4 piece of paper to live in.
That ducks, despite being aquatic birds,
are kept in sheds
where they don't have any water at all to swim in
or to properly clean themselves.
Or that turkeys are bread to be so big
the only way they can reproduce, is with human assistance,
which requires the farm workers to masturbate the male turkeys
to collect their semen and artificially inseminate the females.
That we place such little value in poultry
is evident by some of the practices we allow to happen.
The egg industry, for example, without fear of prosecution
can implement pain and suffering on millions of hens each year
by a process known as debeaking.
This is a process that involves sluicing part of their beak,
an operation which is done without anesthetic or pain relief.
It is a process
which can also be carried out on turkeys and ducks
and has been proven to show long-term chronic pain in those birds,
as well as signs of depression.
The defenders of the industry say
it's necessary because the birds are aggressive.
But poultry aren't naturally aggressive.
They only become aggressive out of frustration,
and that frustration comes from the ways they're farmed,
the confinement systems.
Put yourself in their place.
What would you do if I told you that you're not leaving here today,
you're actually spending the next 12 months
exactly where you are.
That's the amount of space you'll have for the next 12 months.
I reckon frustration is going to brew.
When you realize you can't actually outstretch your hands,
when you can't stretch your legs,
when you can't properly clean yourself;
and as a reaction, some of us are going to start lashing out at one another.
That's human nature.
Then there's the other untold story of the egg industry,
and that is what happens to the male birds.
And so, the chickens that are used for the egg industry,
whether it's the battery system, the barn system, or the free-range system,
are all hatched in hatcheries.
After they're about a day or so old, they get sexed.
The girls are moved out to sheds where they spend about 4 months
before they finally move on to whatever farm they are going to.
Their brothers are thrown into plastic bags
where some of them suffocate before they are gassed.
Or, they could be fed into a machine called a macerator
which will actually grind them up while they're still conscious.
This is all legal, and no one bats an eyelid,
because, after all, they are just chickens.
Roosters are the most disrespected of those beings
as humans refer to as farm animals.
Their lives just don't matter.
Some people think the roosters are the birds used for the meat industry,
they are the ones that people buy in the supermarkets.
But they are not.
That's a completely different bird.
It's a bird called a broiler,
and it's been genetically bred to grow much quicker than nature intended.
And they get slaughtered when they're 5 to 7 weeks old.
It results in a bird that looks kind of frankensteinish in appearance:
has a big body, really big feet.
The turkey industry operates kind of similarly as well.
And one turkey industry expert has actually said that if a human child grew
at the same rate as a commercial turkey grows,
at 18 weeks of age that human child would weight 227 kilograms.
Those of you who might have chickens in your backyard,
or you've spent some time with chickens,
will know how sociable they can be.
Apart from being very sociable animals,
studies have shown that chickens have better cognitive skills
than cats, dogs, and some primates.
Researchers at Sydney's Macquarie University
have declared chickens the most underrated animals on the planet
after discovering their complex communication skills.
Chickens have the ability to remember us
and their experiences with us.
They also have the ability to recognize up to a 100 individuals in a group
by physical characteristics.
And, if you think turkeys are silly,
that's just a myth.
They actually have great eyesight, great hearing.
Like chickens, they have very well-developed vocabularies.
They can recognize each other through their voices,
and they can actually communicate their emotions to one another.
They do this through this snood
which is the fleshy bit that hangs down from their foreheads,
and it actually changes color according to their emotional state.
The girls at A Poultry Place can sometimes get quite annoying
because they'll come up to me and get under my feet,
and almost trick me over as I'm walking.
A lot like your pet dog or your pet cat can do
when they want your attention.
I sometimes like to think
that's them trying to thank me for giving them a good life.
And then sometimes, I actually stop myself and think:
"Maybe I should be the one thanking them for what they've given me."
When I first saw my images of battery hens, I felt empty.
Because I identified with those hens trapped in those cages
where they can't show any of their natural instincts.
And at that time in my life I felt the same way.
But my cage was of my own making.
I had allowed society to force me into it, and by the time I realized I was trapped,
I let the strength and courage to break free for many years.
As an animal advocate, I could be out on the streets
telling people how their eggs are produced
and where their meat comes from,
but I just couldn't tell the world anything about me.
It started developing into this internal conflict.
Those were the days when I was trying to come to terms with my sexuality
and seriously contemplating that ending my life was the best solution.
It was my desire to do something
on behalf of those hens that kept me going.
Today, I'm an out-and-proud gay man,
just as much as I am an unashamed advocate
for some of those beings my fellow humans feel the need to eat.
A Poultry Place is a manifestation of this.
It's a safe haven for some of the world's most abused animals.
It's not a farm and if anyone refers to it as a farm, I quickly correct them.
To me the word 'farm' evokes the image of a place
where non-humans are ultimately exploited.
Whereas at A Poultry Place, the residents are free to live their lives,
without the expectation of having to give something to me back.
But the girls and boys at A Poultry Place give me heaps back: affection,
companionship, and they provide heaps of entertainment.
Imagine how you would feel if you wake up one morning
and, all of a sudden, your whole life had changed,
and you could now do the stuff
that you've always wanted to do, but was never capable of doing.
I get to see that quite often nowadays.
The peaking duck splashing in the pond of water
for the first time ever in his or her life.
A battery hen, the first time she comes out of the cage,
the first thing she does she stretches her wings out.
She's never been able to do that before.
She'll pick up a foot, and she scratches under a wing; again, first time.
With her pathetic stump of the beak she'll try to preen herself,
but she hasn't got many feathers to preen because she's been kept in that cage.
While her feathers will grow back, her beak won't.
But that doesn't stop her
from picking up straw and making a nest where she might lay an egg.
And when she has finished that, she goes outside.
She scratches in the dirt, and she creates a hollow in the ground.
She gets in, and she dust-bathes; that's how she cleans herself.
She's doing all this under the sun, first time ever in her life.
And they are not alone.
The big birds - the broilers and the turkeys -
have as much zest for life despite their size.
And, unfortunately, their size is going to eventually end up
with them developing mobility issues or fatal heart and respiratory conditions.
That can't be stopped, that's just the way they're bred.
But they still have a zest for life,
they still want to go out and dust-bathe like their ex-battered hen-friends.
But their dustbathe-bathing behavior is a bit more--
well, it's not as delicate, put it that way.
(Laughter)
When they get excited,
they do this funny little run-and-flap-of-the-wing dance
to try to hold their balance,
as I run across the paddock to see where they are going.
If I am outside playing music,
the turkeys will come and join me, and they'll sing along.
And, thankfully, they are as appreciative as I am,
of 1980's pop sensation Bucks Fizz.
(Laughter)
The theme of this year's TEDx conference is "Unchartered."
Unchartered is described as unexplored and unknowing.
In the 15 years I've been living hands-on with the rescued and unwanted,
I've had the great privilege of introducing many people to live poultry.
For most, it's the first time they've met a chicken, a duck, or a turkey.
Everyone goes through the same experiences.
They are surprised at how social the birds are,
they're surprised at the structures that exist amongst the flocks.
They're shocked by some of the physical scars they still carry.
Many are surprised when they are approached
by a duck, a chicken, or a turkey for a hug or a pet.
They're shocked when one of them is cheeking after jumping to a lap,
because that's the kind of behavior they expect
from the family dog or the family cat,
not a bird they called dinner.
For some, it is an eye-opening experience, for others, a life-changing one.
If you've never spent any time with a chicken,
I urge you to try to seek someone out who has some
and explore the experience,
see where it leads you,
go into some unchartered territory,
see what happens,
because you never know where it might lead you
and what decisions you might make as a result.
Thank you.
(Applause)