Turkey Barns

I think the part of Food Inc that I found the most relatable to my life and therefore quite intriguing was the part about the chicken barns. I have an uncle up in Wisconsin who has two turkey barns up for Jenny-O. While I have not been to see that part of my family since he got the barns last summer, from what I hear, he is experiencing many of the same problems that were discussed in the video. For the first I think ten years that he has these barns, he will make a penny for every turkey he raises to maturity and gets carried away. After these ten years, the price goes up to two pennies per turkey. While these could eventually be profitable, he had to take out around $800,000 to just build the two barns. As the one lady on the video said, he has also experienced having to pay for upgrades on the barns so he knows he won’t be able to pay them off as soon as he had originally thought. All of the turkeys are continually on antibiotics because they are kept in such tight quarters that if one were to get sick, they would all get sick. We saw the lady having to carry out several dead chickens. My uncle says it is pretty typical for between three to ten turkeys to die every day. He says the reason most of them die is because turkeys are an aggressive animal and having them cooped up in such a small place they take their aggression out on the other birds. While the birds don’t always kill each other, they do injure them badly enough that my uncle has to kill them. Knowing my uncle has these types of barns and hearing some of his stories helped me to better understand and appreciate Food Inc’s message.