McChickens

So, I'm taking a course related to ethics and animals and we're reading an article about whether or not it would be moral to breed chickens that don't think or feel or... anything really, except lay eggs. Imagine - headless creatures fed intravenously with more or less the thought capacity of a worm. Almost like a plant, only it grows meat.

Setting aside safety concerns or other human-oriented issues, and assuming that current "factory-farming" methods are morally unacceptable, would it be morally acceptable to keep the genetically modified chickens in the poor conditions? Would people who now don't eat chicken for moral reasons feel that certain modifications would render chickens fit to consume?

Bill and I actually had this discussion a while ago and we called the modified chickens "McChickens". Thus, it makes sense that when you go to McDonalds, you can either get the "crispy chicken" sandwich or the "McChicken" sandwich. Eeewwww... (in Bioethics, this is called the "yuk" factor.)