A
Chicken’s
Life
Today
chickens are raised indoors in huge. windowless
sheds. There
are anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 chickens in each
shed. The chickens
are placed in the sheds when they are about a day or 2 old. The food, water, and
lights are all controlled. Most chickens have never
even seen a blade of grass or sunlight in their lifetimes.
The
large number of chickens in such cramped and small cages cause them to grow
aggression and peck at each other. The chicken producers believe that dim light
causes less aggression, so the lights in there are very dim.
Another cruel solution they found is called "Debeaking". In the process of debeaking the chicken producers cut the upper beak off the chickens or sear them off with a red hot iron. Despite what chicken producers say, this is a very painful process.
The
poultry sheds or broilers, are also run in very inhumane conditions. The air is
filled with dust and smells awful. They suffer from many different diseases. The
conditions they are in literally drive
them crazy.
At
7 weeks old they are packed up and shipped away to the slaughterhouse.
At the
slaughterhouse the chickens are unloaded. Then they have to wait, sometimes
several hours, till they are hauled out of the crates and hung by one leg upside
down on a conveyer belt. They then have their throats slit. A cruel end to a
short, cruel life. Millions upon Millions of these chickens are murdered yearly
just so you could have your chicken to eat. (For Those Who Aren't Vegetarians)
Why
give up eggs? Factory
farms that produce eggs are even worse than the broilers. The newly hatched
chicks are sorted by male and female. The males are considered useless since they don't give
out eggs. So they are either tossed
alive into plastic garbage bags
where they suffocate and die, killed with carbon monoxide, or they are tossed
into a grinding machine.
\
Male Chicks lay dying in a dumpster behind an egg hatchery.
The
females are all placed in cramped, wire cages. The cages are called
"Batteries". This is
where the females will spend the rest of their lives. They are then shoved into
tiny cages with 3-6 other chickens. (To
imagine what this might be like, imagine living your entire life in a compact
car with 6 other people. YOUR
ENTIRE LIFE, you can’t get out to walk around or exercise)
They barely have enough room to turn around.
The smells, sights and sounds are awful. Sometimes their toenails
grow around the bottom wire so they are left immobile.
The
hens stop producing enough eggs when they are about a
year and a half old.
Then they are slaughtered and turned into dog
food.
Incase
You Didn’t Know…
ü
Most
chicken are fed antibiotics everyday. If
you eat chicken, you eat antibiotics. Therefore,
when you are given antibiotics from a doctor to fight a health problem your body
will have become stable to antibiotics so the effect of the antibiotics on the
disease will become decreased.
ü
Up
to one-fifth of chickens are still conscious when they are dipped in boiling
water to loosen their feathers for plucking.
ü
Eighty
percent of all eggs come from battery hens, kept five to a cage no bigger than a
microwave oven.
ü
Broiler
sheds contain up to 50,000 birds - each one allowed the space of a telephone
directory
ü
Four
fifths of broiler chickens {broilers are killed for their meat} have broken
bones and deformed feet, legs and other bone deformities.
ü
Chicken’s
usual lifespan is 10-20 years. In
broilers they only live for 6-7 weeks.
ü
Chicken
is NOT a health food. It contains as much cholesterol as beef (100mg in just
four ounces}, and a single egg has twice as much artery clogging cholesterol as
a hamburger. The slaughter machines spatter bacteria-laden feces onto the
carcasses. Up to 90 per cent of all chicken flesh sold is swarming with
salmonella amongst other dangerous bacteria.
