Just heard this on the Radio 2 9PM news.
Fertiliser plants have shut down because of the cost of gas and apparently the process creates CO2 which is used to gas chickens and create fizzy drinks.
The 'good' news is schools and hospitals will still have chicken because all the meat used in those two organisations is 'Halal' anyway.
I can only assume that they use CO2 rather than N2 for animal euthanasia as it?s cheaper. Thoroughly horrible stuff to inhale. If this promotes a switch to N2 then this would be a very good thing.
Tim
More than you probably wanted to know here
They do! Based on scientific data gained over many years.
CO2 at lower levels induces analgesia, then after longer exposure or higher concentrations anaesthesia then ultimately (time or higher %) the degree of cerebral acidosis (& hypoxia) proves fatal. It is usually used in poultry in a phased system initially <40% (often as low as 18%) then raised progressively to 70% or so. In pigs the usual system is >80% CO2 the pigs being lowered into the gas resulting in exposure to a rising concentration inducing unconsciousness and then death - though the rate of rise in % is faster then in poultry, but is likely to be less stressful than some other methods.
The use of inert gasses (initially Argon now more usually N2) only induces cerebral hypoxia/anoxia without any of the analgesic properties of CO2, it also produces marked convulsions, as far as can be established after loss of consciousness. Argon was used initially due to being heaver than air - whilst N2 is lighter than air so is harder to contain.
Thus sometimes N2 & CO2 are mixed (< 30% CO2 & <2% O2) the CO2 reducing the convulsions & speeding the loss of consciousness.
DAMHIK - IJD OK
It (CO2) is also used in the modified atmosphere packing that is used for many food stuffs these days, so also a problem is there is a shortage.
Avpx
II was just thinking myself that gassing chickens sounds a bad way to die, far better the old fashioned way, though no chicken has ever come back from either to report. Brian
My grandfather, a farmer, used the old fashioned method - get the wife to hold chickky while grandpa wacked it over the head with a stout length of wood, followed by cutting its throat internally.
As he got older and both his eyes developed bad cataracts, there came a time when he missed the bird and broke one of his (2nd) wifes wrists. Oops.
Andrew
That article does say that some species (unlike humans) can detect lack of oxygen, rather than build up of CO2, but it also says that "the experience is still less aversive than CO2 exposure"
I expect the operatives wear protective equipment.
A mildly interesting read on the fragility of CO? supply after the 2018 shortage, sounds awfully familiar this time around ... except crumpets seem unaffected so far, maybe they've gone back to bicarb?
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