We’ve all seen the commercials: a contented family gathers together in the sunny kitchen to relish a fresh-baked chicken dinner. The scene is idyllic. The smiles, laughter, and perfect place settings make the impression that the companies behind these ads care about general well-being and happiness. But because many secretly- filmed documentaries have shown, the horrors experienced by the birds who find yourself on our dinner tables are nearly unimaginable.
Modern Backyard hens doesn’t look very modern. It appears barbaric. Plus it bears little resemblance to farming.
Birds who will be hatched at modern commercial poultry farms begin their lives on a conveyor belt. Once to remain taken from their shells, the horrors begin. Newly hatched the male is hand selected through the conveyor belt and tossed alive into grinding machines. Because birds are exempt through the Humane Slaughter Act, this practice is really as legal as it is unethical. Tens of thousands of chicks meet this atrocious fate daily. To the females, their ultimate fate depends upon whether they’re being hatched as broilers or laying hens. Both types are taken to environments their current address in impossibly crowded conditions and they are missing out on ordinary pleasures of existence like sunlight and outdoors. The specifics of their traumatizing lives, however, vary by their intended use.
Broilers, chickens being raised for meat, are stuffed with the thousands into warehouses. The chicks receive artificial human growth hormones that can cause their bodies’ development to outpace the development of their legs, and for that reason, they can be can not walk or move as soon as they’re only months old. Many chicks get no sleep because lighting is maintained on constantly to stimulate unnatural eating patterns that facilitate faster growth. Nothing regarding life is normal or natural.
Laying hens experience different, but equally horrifying, treatment. They’re jammed into cages so small they are unable to even spread their wings. Their beaks are burned so that they won’t peck at themselves away from frustration. This debeaking often brings about severe, chronic pain for that animals. Most are also be subject to an exercise called “force molting” , involving starving the birds-sometimes not feeding them for approximately two weeks-in order to shock their bodies into another egg laying cycle. Once egg production drops, they are immediately shipped off to be slaughtered.
Because the 1990’s, many undercover investigators have secretly filmed the grim and horrifying conditions during these commercial chicken farms. For the reason that films negatively affect sales, the meat industry has fought to really make it an offence to secretly operate cameras inside their facilities. These laws, built to silence whistle-blowers, are referred“ag-gag” laws. But it is mainly due to those earlier films how the public is becoming mindful of the terrible conditions through which commercially “farmed” chickens live and also the inhumane means by they will die. So next time you see among those commercials on TV, don’t be fooled through the happy family propaganda. Under the surface is often a horrifying reality that runners companies don’t want one to find out about.
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