Who said chickens are not fighters.

Sydney. Sydney. Sydney.

There are a few places in Sydney where you will find something out of ordinary. Like today, Karen (me former Universtity mate) & I decided to catch up. We planned to meet up in Newtown, a suburb closeby to Sydney CBD. Newtown is different. Now think of potato chips, substitute that with organically grown pumpkin chips. That's Newtown. It is where gay & lesbian, painters, activists and even punks that we all thought to be dead  lives happily together. And together they make this town unique, fun and quirky.

Today I met a bunch of Chicken Fighters! They are a bunch of chicken liberators. They advocate eating poultry product responsibly.

These bunch of Chicken FIghters (as I labelled them), are demonstrating against the act of cruelty against chicken livestock that ended up on the your dinner table - in a form of meat and eggs. There were aboout half dozen of them sitting in a wire cage under the shade of nearby building but the heat and humidity was quite unbearable.

What I found out was that they planned to continue the resistance and quest for better life of dinner-chooks (aussie terms for chicken) for 30 days. Also found three out of four whom I interviewed are vegetarian. The vegetarians tried harder to convince me to buy Free Range Eggs instead of barn or cage-laid eggs. The problem is they cost more. A dozen of Free Range eggs 700g cost around $5.50. Cage-laid eggs around about $1.00 - $2.00 cheaper. If I am a tight arse - they will likely lose my vote.

To understand the problem, in Australia we have variety choices of egg and chook meat. Type of eggs that appear on the supermarket shelves are cage-laid, barn-laid, free range and organic free range (a bit like telur from Kampung). Cheapest are cage-laid eggs. Why? Because they are mass produced.  Which means heaps of chooks are cramped into  tiny space in a cage, and thousand of cages are being farmed in an area. The entire length of chooks life in a cage are condemned to produce eggs - hence cage-laid eggs. In about 30-45 days, they will become... meat products.

Which reminds me of the movie Matrix where human are being farmed to make Duracell for the robots. The difference is the chook do not have Neo. Hence The Chicken Fighters was born.

Now that is the beauty about life in Sydney (im sure most of the western world). In Malaysia, I bet no one give the &%$#. I am sure there are many of them in Sydney as well. But!!! Do you know any chicken fighters who will go to battle to win right for the chickens? Who will sit in a cage? for more than 5 mins? with no cushion? with no ice latte? or Teh o Peng?

So - which one will you choose. Depressed and miserable or happy and unsuspicious - dead-chook dinner?

Comments

[maurice egan]

Thanks for alerting me to the new story. The 3 pictures and story on the chicken fighters were graphic and interesting. You captured the ethos of Newtown very well for outsiders. What a stinking hot day the caged ones chose for their protest.

Anyway, if ever you're out of a job, you could think of a stint in journalism. You have the journalist's eye for a good, off-the-cuff story. Congratulations for an intriguing addition to your web!

[Lynette Chiang Cowan]

Wow ... the website is really cool . I like the Korean backdrop , just reminded me of the place again and I've enjoyed every meal when I was in Korea. Hmm ... btw, do you have the Kimchi recipe ?

[Author]

Thanks Lay Cheng. Big joy for me in Korea is mainly the food. I could sit for days!! And yes I do have a genuine Kim Chi recipe. :)