What were they thinking: Chickens and Water

Susan Wilson at TechBlorge takes a look at Gray water recycling opposed by Southern Nevada Water Authority and Dennis Avery talks In Praise of Cages for Laying Hens at Canada Free Press for 2 examples that should make you wonder what were they thinking?

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has lost its mind. Residents aren’t allowed to recycle their gray water because it might lower their water bill. Say what? Logic has clearly left the room.

It seems that the water authority gets credit from the waste water flow back to the supply. That allows them to draw more than their legal allotment. Rather than just reduce demand, it seems bureaucracy is prefers increasing total flow.

Then there is the movement to ban individual cages for egg farm chickens. Through personal experience, Avery runs through the history that led to current industrial practice.

the egg producers of the modern world have invented wire cages for their hens. The birds are kept safe and comfortable, and they’re socially surrounded by other birds that can’t peck them to death. Higher feed efficiency with the cages is kinder to the planet, because millions of acres don’t have to be converted from wildlife habitat to grow extra feed and for chicken pastures.

Across the affluent world, bans on caged laying hens are being pushed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the U.S. HSUS is not your local Humane Society that accepts pets for adoption but a radical anti-pet group—that wants to eliminate all domestic livestock and poultry, along with all pets and circus animals

It appears that California is succumbing to this thinking and taking it a bit further. The idea is to even ban imports from any place that allows individual chicken cages.

That’s why I have recited our recent real-world experience, which sums up the history of chicken-raising over recent centuries. Now, like the U.S. Congress, which over the past 15 years demanded that banks make more housing loans to people who wouldn’t make their payments, California and perhaps some other states are planning to make egg-production nearly impossible.

Do the activists pushing the cage bans really have the best interests of the birds and our children at heart?

It’s enough to make you wonder what these people are thinking – or are they thinking at all?