“Farming the Unconscious” proposes an alternative way of growing
chickens for food: embedding them into a matrix. Free from
cruelty, the chickens are unconscious, and free of pain and
disease. They are well fed, healthy, and stress free because
they are kept out of cages (and not awake) thus responding to
ethical arguments against factory farming. As long as their
brain stem is intact, the homeostatic functions of the chicken
will continue to operate. By removing the cerebral cortex of the
chicken, its sensory perceptions are removed. It can be produced
in a denser condition while remaining alive, and oblivious.The
feet will also be removed so the body of the chicken can be
packed together in a dense volume. Food, water and air are
delivered via an arterial network and excreta is removed in the
same manner. Around 1000 chickens will be packed into each
‘leaf’, which forms part of a moving, productive system. The
model shows that the chickens take up less space than
traditional factory farming. The chickens ar