Would you still buy a Chicken if you had to purchase it Alive?

In relation to chickens and turkeys that are regularly slaughtered for human consumption, here is a quote from the perspective of these fated birds: “Humans choose apathy toward us birds merely because we are of low intellect and lack the capacity to speak the Human language. Regardless of our low intellect, however, we must point out to them that we are still CONSCIOUS and SELF-AWARE! WOW!!! By all universal odds, aren’t you lucky you aren’t a chicken!”

So the simple question for the day is whether the so commonly consumed staple in the American diet, the chicken, would be purchased for consumption IF a law was enacted by congress that prohibited the slaughter of these birds before they were purchased for consumption.  Now, there may be rationale for this law, for it would ensure that the chicken was freshly killed for your consumption and not sitting around collecting salmonella or E Coli or Listeria.  You can actually inspect the chicken to make sure its not diseased or visibly deformed, and you can avoid the horror stories about how dirty,crowded, dark and disgusting poultry (for that matter all animal) houses are…..my God, if we can’t even rely on the processing and safety of peanuts, what is your view and level of confidence regarding commercial slaughter houses and how they approach the processing of living creatures for our consumption fancy.  And animal rights people may be happier that animals are not being killed to fill orders and grocery store shelves in favor of a more one on one approach to the sale and consumption of slaughtered living creatures….come to think of it, they would not be happy with this either.  Any way, you get the picture I’m trying to create.

Now, I’m not a licensed vegetarian yet but I as I get older, I am more likely to be affected by the knowledge that consumption of living creatures carries a different meaning for me than eating broccoli or romaine lettuce, or grapes, or raspberries…gosh, I’m getting hungry.   Having been born and raised in the city, my first meeting with a chicken or cow was post facto in the grocery store and its taken some time – decades - for me to mentally trace the path of these animals as they pass through life’s stages from birth to the feeding barns and farms, to slaughter houses, to the market, to your house and refrigerator and then beautifully dressed and garnished at your dinner table for you to consume without any thought or guilt that you were partially responsible for the death of this innocent creature. 

But to get back to the question, IF you had to purchase and visibly inspect a live chicken before purchase, knowing it would then be taken somewhere out of your space and range and quickly slaughtered and packaged and then given to you warm after its death and you would then pay for it and take it home, and so on and so forth, would you still buy chickens to eat?  I would really like to know the answer to this question…..