Everyone’s seen the commercials: a happy family gathers together in a sunny kitchen to savor a fresh-baked chicken dinner. The scene is idyllic. The smiles, laughter, and ideal place settings create the impression that the companies behind these ads value general well-being and happiness. But because many secretly- filmed documentaries show, the horrors seen by the birds who turn out on our dinner tables are nearly unimaginable.
Modern Backyard hens doesn’t look very modern. It’s barbaric. And yes it bears little resemblance to farming.
Birds who are hatched at modern commercial poultry farms begin their eats a conveyor belt. Once they are removed from their shells, the horrors begin. Newly hatched the male is personally picked through the conveyor belt and tossed alive into grinding machines. Because birds are exempt through the Humane Slaughter Act, this practice will be as legal as it is unethical. Tens of thousands of chicks meet this atrocious fate each day. For the females, their ultimate fate is dependent upon whether they’re being hatched as broilers or laying hens. Both types are delivered to environments their current address in impossibly crowded conditions and they are lacking ordinary pleasures of existence like sunlight and fresh air. The more knowledge about their traumatizing lives, however, vary by their intended use.
Broilers, chickens being raised for meat, are stuffed from the a huge number into warehouses. The chicks get artificial growth hormones that can cause their bodies’ development to outpace the expansion of these legs, and consequently, they are generally unable to walk or move once they’re only months old. Many chicks get no sleep because lighting is kept on constantly to stimulate unnatural eating patterns that facilitate faster growth. Nothing regarding lives are normal or natural.
Laying hens experience different, but equally horrifying, treatment. They’re jammed into cages so small they can not even spread their wings. Their beaks are burned so they won’t peck at themselves beyond frustration. This debeaking often results in severe, chronic pain for that animals. Many are also subject to a practice called “force molting” that involves starving the birds-sometimes not giving them for two weeks-in to shock their bodies into another egg laying cycle. Once egg production drops, they’re immediately shipped off and away to be slaughtered.
Since 1990’s, many undercover investigators have secretly filmed the grim and horrifying conditions over these commercial chicken farms. Because the films negatively affect sales, the meat industry has fought to make it a criminal offense to secretly operate cameras in their facilities. These laws, designed to silence whistle-blowers, are referred“ag-gag” laws. But it is largely because of those earlier films the public is becoming aware of the terrible conditions by which commercially “farmed” chickens live as well as the inhumane strategies by they will die. So the next time you see among those commercials on TV, don’t be misled with the happy family propaganda. Behind the curtain can be a horrifying reality those companies do not want one to learn about.
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