Here’s the note I received from loyal reader Leslie. She’s passionate about animal rights and wanted to spread the word on this issue:
One of my current projects is to alert people to the hidden cruelty in the egg industry. And, as you know, there is a large group of people in Asheville who raise chickens in their backyards. On the surface, it seems quite charming and these urban chicken keepers seem to love their birds. However, the problem is that most people who keep chickens in their backyards obtain their chicks from hatcheries. And hatcheries are not charming or loving.
You may have seen the recent (widely reported) news that a national animal rights group, Mercy For Animals, released footage (obtained by a hidden camera at the world’s largest hatchery) of baby male chicks being ground up alive.
Each day, hundreds of thousands of male chicks are disposed of in this horrific manner because they are of no use in the egg industry. Officials at Hy-Line International (the hatchery where the footage was obtained)admit that this grossly disturbing practice is standard in their facility and in the industry as a whole. The day-old baby chicks are snatched from their mothers, thrown onto a noisy fast-moving conveyor belt, roughly grabbed by workers, thrown into chutes which carry them to machines that spin them and tear them to pieces. Without a trace of irony, Hy-Line officials refer to this practice as “euthanasia.”
Thirty million chicks die this way each year.
And the outrageous cruelty doesn’t end there. Hatcheries force the female chicks into a spinning debeaker where the tip of their extremely sensitive beaks are removed by a laser. Then these chicks (or “genetic products” as Hy-Line officials call them) are crammed into boxes and shipped all over the country, including (most likely) to Asheville “chickeners.”
You cannot get around it – keeping chickens supports and enables the beyond-comprehension cruelty seen in this video.
3 Comments
"Snatched from their mothers" is a highly misleading (and false!) statement, since most commercial laying breeds will no go broody on their own and thus the eggs were hatched via an incubator.
It is a disturbing mental image, but I don’t see their other alternatives. Even if you hatch your own chickens, you’re going to get far more males than you need. If they weren’t disposed of, what could be done with them? I personally think that a quick end (even a bloody one via grinder) would be preferable to being raised as a meat bird.
Leslie,
While the video is horrific, how does raising chickens – and eating the eggs that are laid in your own backyard – cause further damage? Ok, so you order your first chickens from a hatchery – but aren’t the next generation not born into slavery, but free-range-dom? By discouraging the backyard chicken enthusiast, you’re sending them eggless and hungry back into the arms of the agro-business. You’re preaching to the choir – how well does that work for any rights movement? While I have sympathy for your cause, your argument should contain more than blind passion.
I grew up on a small family farm. I know where food comes from.
HOw do people even work a job doing this?? I know ya gotta have a job, but there is no way I could stand there and watch those dibs fall into that grinder. I know what an E-Stop is for!