Beasts in my belfry: Maneka Gandhi At least 90 per cent of Indian chickens are fed arsenic compounds; they are, therefore, the carriers of diseases Do not believe for a moment that chicken is good for you and that if you have a cholesterol or heart problem and do not want to stop eating meat, you should eat chicken. There is constant research in this industry as to how to make fatter and heavier broilers so that they bring more money. Profits, after all, are based on quantity. To get this result the chickens are forcefully fed with cheap fat-producing carbohydrates and cardboard mixtures, even crushed stones. And to see that they survive this, they are given antibiotics, sulfa drugs, hormones and nitrofurans. At least 90 per cent of Indian chickens are fed arsenic compounds. Two drugs, which are banned from sale because they cause cancer, are used by chicken factory owners to make the yolks of eggs yellower. This is what the Indian Poultry Industry magazine says "Without antibiotics, the industry cannot maintain intensive farming practices." What food is fed to the chicken? Cardboard, dried poultry manure (its own feces), fungused cops like maize that cannot be fed to human beings and so are cheap in the market, fish waste, slaughterhouse waste, feathers, synthetic vitamins, mineral supplements (crushed marble dust from the marble mining industry for calcium), antibiotics, deworming medicines, growth hormones. This is mixed with a known cancer producer -- gentian violet. The mixture tastes so bad -- even for the chickens - that it is covered with a flavouring agent, which is also a chemical. The yellow is not created by nature or the chicken. It is a yellow dye created by feeding Xanthophyll, zeanthin, arigold dye and caroteinic acid. What is the chicken's state now? Its skeleton cannot take the load of its weight. So skeletal disorders are common. The legs give way so the chicken can only crouch or hobble in great pain. The chicken suffers from fatigue, blindness, kidney damage, muscle weakness, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia and inflamed joints. The hearts are full of blood clots and every few minutes a chicken dies of a heart attack -- jumping into the air with a loud squawk and falling down dead. The Poultry Digest magazine says this is called the 'Flipover Syndrome' and is very common. Even these sick birds are sold to you. The bird has few feathers if any, and its skin is bright red and raw, thanks to constant rubbing. A great percentage of chickens have a chicken cancer called leukosis: One survey showed that 90 per cent of chickens in poultries had it! In India, they also get cholera very often. All these diseases enter your body when you eat the chicken. There are seven kinds of bird flu and poultry farm birds have one or the other all the time. What happens to you when you eat this sick and suffering bird? What you are eating is not meat. It is an extremely dangerous cocktail of drugs. When you eat antibiotics through chicken, no antibiotics will work on you as you will be resistant to them. WHO has published reports about deaths taking place in human beings because they are resistant to antibiotics as they have eaten far too many via chicken. Fifty per cent of all antibiotics produced in the world are fed to chickens. Penicillin and tetracycline are the most common. Which are the other dangerous drugs: Sulphanamides, which stay in the meat; dimetridazole, which is known to cause cancer; benzimidazole, which also causes cancer. Ionophores are used to speed weight gain. Probiotics are used to help digestion of the rubbish they eat. Hormones like Zeranol, Testosterone, progesterone and estradiol are used as growth accelerators. The egg industry adds antioxidants to chicken feed to lengthen hen's egg laying cycles. Arsenic is used to speed growth and boost egg production. Chloramphen-icol, which is toxic to human beings because it is linked to cancer and birth defects, is put into the food to increase the chicken's resistance. Oxytetracycline, dexamethazone, lincomycin, phenylbutazone (for removing "stress"), amino acid solution, spectinomycine, amoxicillin, amprolium, levamisole, potassium penicillin, tylocin, trimethoprim, etc -- these are just a few of the drugs given in the feed or through injections. Many of them are known carcer producers and have the labels on them "severely restricted use", but who is supervising the poultry producers? The Food and Drug Administration, in a casual check, found 143 harmful and dangerous drugs in poultry meat. This is the report, "Forty-two are known to cause cancer or as suspected of causing cancer. Twenty cause birth defects and six cause mutations." Does the food inspector know the names of these drugs? Or is he just someone who comes infrequently, takes his bribes and goes away to certify that the factory is alright? Not a single chicken that has died of cancer is thrown away; each one is sold to you. Not only that you eat extremely dangerous pesticides as well. Since flies and other insects multiply in chicken farms, they have to be eliminated. So, poultry farmers spay insecticides onto the chickens regularly which get into the skin and are eaten by you. DDT, which is banned across the world, is in common use. Is that all? No. Heavy metals are found in animal kidneys and livers: Cadmium, lead and arsenic all of which stay in your body. Modern poultry producers will never stop these deadly practices. They believe drugs are problem fixers. The victim of these drugs is not the chicken -- it is you. The deadliest drug trafficker in the world is not the heroin smuggler -- it is the poultry farmer.