Not sure of your point. If it is that some mistreat the chicken in order to save a couple of bucks, I am sure you are right. If it is that the standards themselves are not humane enough and makes the chickens life miserable, you might be right, but I neither know enough on the subject nor am I able to speak to chickens to ask their opinions (would you rather live like this or have never been born?).

As a kid I used to have a friend whose dad was a farmer and I spent a lot of time on their farm in the summer. They would grow "ethnic" greens (rapini, dandelion greens....) but he also had, for fun, some animals (need something to occupy the time through the winter months) including chickens. When we went to the chicken coop the chickens would always be bunched close together in the same area even if the rest of the enclosing was empty. Why? same reason other birds live in flocks and other animals live in herds and some fishes travel in schools. Evolutionary biology. If you are alone and a hdfungry predator decides it is lunch time there is a 1/1 chance you will be lunch. If you are in a group of 100 there is a 1/100 chance that you will be lunch and a 99% chance of survival.



what a load of BS

1) I am 47 and as far as I know I don't have any kids, so it would be idiotic for me to worry about my great grandchildren

2) let's just be clear, the scientists estimate that if everything goes well (best case scenario for increase) at the end of the century (i.e. 2100) the earth population will be around 11B, to get to 20B our great grand kids will probably be great grand parents + if they are still alive

3) the earths land mass is around 150M square km, if we assume a population of 20B that would average out to 80,000 square feet of land per individual, since people now live on water and others in homes with multiple levels (including apartment buildings and condos I don't get why people will need to live in a 3'x3' cell. At 20B (assuming enough food) that would mean society will most likely look like today with some living in small apartments and others living in mansions, while others might not have a neighbour near by.

4) I don't get the mush part. Is it because you are assuming that the person will be so old that they can't eat anything solid? is it a storage issue (like a bomb shelter)? or a transportation issue (like a mars colony bringing food from earth)? other wise it just does not make sense. what I mean is today I can have a delicious chicken breast or leg or turn it into mush and then nuggets (at least it was mush once). if you mean traditional meats won't exist and it will come from insects like these cricket flour protein bars [Link: naakbar.com] then why won't I be able to buy whole crickets and eat them (nice and crispy). Even if it is 100% from plant why won't we be able to choose a less processed version or like oat meal change that grey mush into something more interesting like oatmeal cookies?

5) *comfortably* sustain is not a scientific term. Do you mean eating lobster, saffron, truffles, caviar, kobe beef, fois gras...? dishes made with rare and expensive ingredients? then yes obviously not everyone can just live on them. On the other hand if *comfortably* sustain means everyone can have enough food so that they don't go to bed hungry and malnourished, then the earth can easily handle that today and for the foreseeable future.

If there is not enough food people are constantly hungry and malnourished (and it happens for very few people today due to distribution) it leads to health issues which will mean lower life expectancy, less fertility and more children dying. When it happens to enough individuals it would ultimately have a negative effect on population growth. The fact that population decline is not an issue (but growth is) shows that if there is a shortest f food that it is inconsequential, the fact that so much food gets thrown away shows that the small issue that exists is not one of production but distribution. Since there is no real reason that anyone should go hungry to bed today.