• Question: Are you against the consumption of chickens for food?

    Asked by Emma to Cedric on 10 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      Interesting question, no I am not against eating chickens. The chicken I work on lives in the jungle and is worth protect, they are very colorful! The ones we eat is domesticated and are a good source of meat. In fact, chickens are less damaging to the environment than cows and pigs.

      Moreover, the chicken we work on is a model organism for the study of our systems like the immune system. We learn from these studies about our own immune system. And sometimes researchers have to sacrifice the chickens in order to obtain the immune cells. I hope this doesn’t deter you from Biology.

      Thought I’d share this video on the chicken immune system with you:

      Hello sluglife!
      I hope you don’t mind me adding to my answer.

      Other than sexual behaviours of the fruit flies and chickens, these organisms are also used as model organisms for studying other systems like the immune system and genetic diseases. As such, we learn more about ourselves, as we share about 60% of our genes with fruit flies and more than half our genes with chickens.

      Here’s a great video done together with a colleague of mine on the immune system (a study on chickens):

Comments

  • Photo: Rupert

    Rupert commented on :

    There is an interesting ethical argument about eating animals, including chickens. Do animals have a right to life? If everyone became vegetarian we wouldn’t need many animals so many of them would be killed and no more new ones would be born. Is living for a few years and dying in a humane way better than not living at all? Is it better we allow the spring lambs to jump around in the fields, then feed and grow bigger before they become our lunch – or should they never be born and never live at all?