ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120061
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE HUMAN species isn't the only one subject to outbreaks of violence - and if a contact lens for chickens makes for a more civil barnyard society, we're for it.
Blacksburg Vice Mayor Al Leighton, recently retired from Virginia Tech's animal and poultry sciences department, has developed a red contact lens for chickens that he says will inhibit them from fighting and cannibalizing each other. The way it works, see, is that the red lenses keep the chickens from seeing blood, of which a speck from a peck can set off an awful brawl, especially when chickens are crowded into laying cages.
Leighton, who has been developing the pacifying lens since 1960, and patented it in 1989, is ready to test it on chickens throughout the country. He hopes to make chickens of chickens across the globe.
The idea is to save money. Calm chickens eat less food, and presumably are more productive if they're not stressed out. The contact lenses could save time, too. Farmers now have to trim chickens' beaks to prevent injury to their flocks.
No, the farmers won't have to take the lenses out of the chickens' eyes each night to clean them. Nor, apparently, is it as difficult to pop the teeny lenses into their teeny eyes as it is, say, to find a needle in a haystack.
Leighton, whose project has been featured in national media and on TV talk shows, says he'll next tackle the behavioral problems of hogs. They apparently have a habit of chewing each other's ears off.
Earmuffs, perhaps?
Joking aside, the concept at work here isn't to rethink the effects of crowded captivity, which can provoke pathological behavior. The point is to use technology to better adjust the animals to their living conditions, so as to maximize cost-effectiveness of mass production.
There's no point looking at this through rose-colored glasses. Doing so might tempt one to imagine we could develop a gadget to keep human animals from fighting and killing each other. The solution may be a vision thing, but nothing so simple as a contact lens.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB