Chicks die 'quietly' in postal service deliveries all the time and often, for one reason or other, a box of chicks will sit in a local Post Office and never be picked up by the purchaser.
An excellent report by Animals 24-7,
Birds in the mail: U.S. Postal Service changes kill thousands, Aug. 22,
shows how the current back-up of mail delivery relates to the overall
history and horribleness of shipping birds and other animals as “perishable
matter” through the U.S. Postal Service both on the ground and as airmail.
This morning I submitted the following comment to the Animals 24-7 website:
Thank you Animals 24-7 for this informative coverage of the more than
century-long legal transport of live chickens and many other birds and small
animals through the US Postal Service. As you report, chicks die “quietly”
in postal service deliveries all the time and often, for one reason or
other, a box of chicks will sit in a local Post Office and never be picked
up by the purchaser. Farm enterprises that promote themselves as small and
“local” tend to purchase their chicks entirely through the mail, and they
lobby Congress, successfully, to ensure continuation of this practice. In
addition, male chicks the hatchery industry calls “packers” are frequently
used as packaging material inside boxes of baby hens, known as pullets.
Since most backyard chicken-keepers and small-farm poultry operators do not
want roosters, the hatcheries will destroy the newborns, known as cockerels,
as soon as they hatch. Cockerels, other than those used for cockfighting,
breeding, and meat production, who, notwithstanding, are in the millions,
have no financial value for the hatcheries, so there is no expense shipping
them as “packers.”
Roosters are the most tragic victims of the backyard chicken-keeping trend.
People order female chicks, usually for the eggs, only to discover after 5
months that one, two, or three of the “hens” are roosters. They either don’t
want roosters or, in virtually all suburban locales, roosters are banned, so
the roosters are abandoned, turned into animal shelters, and who knows what
else. Sanctuaries receive pleas from the more responsible dupes of the
hatchery business to please adopt or find a home for the unwanted roosters.
Sadly, there are many more roosters than there are good homes and
sanctuaries to adopt them.
Shipment of live birds and other animals through the Postal Service and as
airmail is one of the many, largely hidden evils of the commodification of
these creatures. School-hatching projects, 4-H, cockfighters, backyard
chicken-keepers – all are responsible for the everlasting misery and abuse
of these innocent and defenseless individuals – most of whom are being
shipped to people and enterprises that will make them suffer unspeakably
until they mercifully are dead.
To learn more, visit UPC:
— Backyard
Chicken–Keeping
—
Cockfighting