Chickens for Meat
Chickens are by far the most consumed land animals. In fact, in the U.S. each year, 9 billion “broiler” (baby) chickens, both males and females, are raised and killed for food. Worldwide over 50 billion chickens are now being slaughtered every year. As a result of genetic manipulation for overgrown muscle tissue (meat) of the breast and thighs, these birds suffer miserably from painful lameness causing them to crouch and hobble in pain, from gastrointestinal and blood diseases, and chronic respiratory infections. The parents of these birds are raised in darkness and kept on semi-starvation diets to reduce the mating infirmities caused by forcing chickens bred for meat to grow too large too fast.
In natural surroundings, chickens are very inquisitive animals. They enjoy dust-bathing, making nests, roosting in trees and searching for food. Like us, chickens form friendships and strong family ties. They love their young and mourn the loss of loved ones. According to animal behaviorist Dr. Chris Evans, chickens are as smart as mammals, including some primates. He explains that chickens are able to understand that recently hidden objects still exist—which is beyond the capacity of small children. Dr. Joy Mench, professor and director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the University of California at Davis, explains, “Chickens show sophisticated social behavior. They can recognize more than a hundred other chickens and remember them. And they have more than thirty types of vocalizations.”
In the brutally unnatural surroundings of a factory farm, “broiler” chickens live the entire 45 days of their lives in semi-darkness on manure-soaked wood shavings, unchanged through several flocks of 30,000 or more birds in a single shed. Excretory ammonia fumes often become so strong that the birds develop a blinding eye disease called ammonia burn. So painful is this disease that afflicted birds rub their hurting eyes with their wings and let out cries of pain.
photo: Farm Sanctuary
“Broiler” chickens are crowded by the thousands into filthy, closed sheds contaminated with poisonous Salmonella and Campylobacter bacteria. In addition to sickening the birds, these bacteria often remain in the cooked flesh, a common cause of food poisoning.
In 1991, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution noted that every week, “millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers.”
Those birds who survive the disease and cramped, filthy conditions of the factory farm are transported to the slaughterhouse in crates on trucks that leave them fully exposed to extreme weather conditions. Many die on the way.
At the slaughterhouse, fully conscious chickens are shackled by their ankles upside-down to a moving conveyor belt. The birds are then given intensely painful electric shocks, which are intended to immobilize them to make it easier to slit their throats. The shocks are frequently not powerful enough to render them unconscious. After being shocked, the birds’ throats are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade, and blood begins rushing out of their bodies.
photo: Farm Sanctuary
Inevitably, the blade misses some birds who then proceed to the next station on the assembly line: the scalding tank. According to USDA statistics, millions of birds every year have their bodies submerged in scalding hot water (about 143° F) while they are fully conscious. According to Virgil Butler, a former slaughterhouse worker, “When this happens, the chickens flop, scream, kick, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads. Then, they often come out the other end with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because they’ve struggled so much in the tank.”
This happens to sensitive birds, smart as mammals, who love their babies and mourn the loss of loved ones.
And despite persistent health warnings, domestic consumption of poultry and egg products continues, resulting in more and more areas of the country and the world being polluted by poultry complexes. For example, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board did a 3-year study showing that half of Tulsa’s drinking water is polluted with chicken waste, including its use as pasture fertilizer, resulting in “taste and odor problems that are either very costly to treat or, in recent years, untreatable.” Horrific for the birds; horrific for the environment.
