Chickens:  Eggs and Poultry

In terms of numbers, chickens as a species can be considered the “food” animal that suffers the most, as in the United States alone, annually around 9 billion chickens are killed for their “meat” and 305 million hens are exploited for their eggs, and then killed once they can no longer produce eggs.  Although more chickens are killed for food than any other farm animal, shockingly, no federal laws protects them from abuse at all.

Whether raised and killed on mass-scale “factory farms” or smaller farms claiming to be more humane, chickens suffer immensely as they are denied all that comes naturally to them. These curious, social , intelligent birds love to be active together, rooting in the dirt, roosting in trees, sunbathing and searching for food in the fresh air.  Chickens are known to make friends, and recognize each other.  They can even play games, such as tic tac toe.  They are denied all that is natural to them in the animal agriculture industry. Instead, they are confined in horrific conditions best described as hell on earth.

Chicken Flesh

Most chickens who are raised to be killed for their meat spend their entire lives intensively confined in massive sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where disease outbreaks are common due to the overcrowded conditions. The chickens are drugged and genetically bred so that they grow incredibly fast, far quicker than normal, so they will result in more profits in a shorter amount of time.  Because of  this, they often suffer from leg deformities, heart attacks, and organ failure.  Many can die because they cannot even reach a water source, since they cannot walk on their own legs due to their abnormally heavy weight.  This is their life until they are violently stuffed into cages and killed at a slaughterhouse to end up on someones plate.  Don’t be fooled by marketing labels that claim smaller scale-chicken farms are more “humane.”  Horrific abuses have been exposed at many smaller farms, and regardless of the size, turning animals into “food” entails massive suffering and death for each and every animal.

Eggs

Female birds, called “laying hens” by the egg industry, are literally treated like egg-making machines. They are jammed together inside wire cages where they don’t even have room to spread their wings, and cannot even clean the feces or urine off themselves because there is no space to move. The egg industry cuts off the sensitive hens’ beaks, without pain relief, because the hens would otherwise peck each other due to the barbaric overcrowding and cruel conditions they are forced to exist in.  (Humans would probably act no differently – imagine how you feel in an overcrowded jam-packed elevator.  Well, imagine if that elevator got stuck — but for the rest of your life.  It would be no surprise if the humans inside started punching each other in a matter of time, in a desperate attempt for some room to breathe.)  For those who feel that eggs are not so bad because chickens aren’t killed to produce the eggs, the truth is that all egg-laying hens are killed to become low-grade meat once their bodies are so spent and used up from being forced to lay eggs in such unnatural conditions for their whole lives, that they can no longer produce “product”.

A tragic side effect of the egg industry is that male chicks born from egg-laying hens are considered useless by the industry and are literally thrown into grinders while alive or mass-suffocated to death in giant bags—200 million of them yearly.  If this seems too grisly to believe, believe it. This is the egg industry.  Buying “cage-free” eggs is not the solution. Cage-free facilities still cram thousands of birds into sheds and chickens still suffer the same cruelties and death.  The federal guidelines for use of terms like “cage free” or “free range” have little meaning and even less regulation.

Once at the slaughterhouse, after enduring a brutal journey on open trucks, the birds have their legs shackled, their throats are slit and they are dipped into boiling water to remove their feathers. Investigations have revealed that many chickens are still alive and conscious when their throats are slit, and many are boiled alive while their feathers are being removed.

Once you learn the truth about the horrors inherent in the chicken and egg industries, it is impossible to justify supporting such abuse.