Jenny Moxham
February 2017
Originally published at KathmanduPost.com, February 4, 2017
Given that 2017 is the Year of the Rooster, why not pledge to make this a better year for roosters—along with their sisters—by refusing to support these ruthless industries with your consumer money. Since we are not natural carnivores, we have no requirement for flesh in our diet, and birds' eggs were never designed, or intended, to be food for anyone. They are simply part of a bird’s reproductive process.
The Year of the Rooster began on January 28. According to Chinese astrology, the year of ones birth sign is the most unlucky year in the 12-year cycle, and fortune, in all aspects of ones life, will not be very good. But what sort of a year will it be for real live roosters? Will it be unlucky for them too?
The roosters I’m specifically thinking about are the birds hatched and raised inside our intensive farms for their eggs and flesh. Oh, I know, roosters don’t lay eggs; but this is where the egg industry’s dark little secret comes into it. What most egg consumers don’t realise is that for every female chick hatched, a male chick, baby rooster, is also hatched.
Obviously, males can’t lay eggs, so they are of no value to the egg industry. Consequently these sweet and adorable baby chicks are regarded as nothing but unwanted by-products. From the moment they enter the world, their experience is vastly different from that which nature intended. Instead of being greeted by their mother’s soft clucking and protective wings, they emerge from their shells inside barren drawers in a hatchery. From here, they are roughly tipped on to a number of conveyor belts that transport them to workers who sort the males from the females.
These sweet, fluffy, yellow chicks are then tipped—flailing, kicking and chirping—into a large mincing machine which shreds their tiny bodies into a bloody slush.
But there is no warm welcome for their baby sisters either. In order to reduce damage caused by feather pecking, they have part of their beaks removed. Because half of all chicks hatched for their flesh are likewise males, or baby roosters, they suffer in this industry too. For nothing but greed, broilers have been abnormally bred to balloon to adult size in just six weeks, creating enormous health problems. Unable to support their heavy bodies, their baby legs become crippled; and birds unable to reach food and water die slowly of starvation and thirst. Others die from heart failure and pulmonary oedema, a condition where their lungs fill with fluid.
Almost all birds are in chronic pain by the time they reach slaughter weight. In addition to all this, they are compelled to live in stinking, gloomy sheds in which they can barely move and the ammonia laden air constantly burns their eyes and lungs. Given that 2017 is the Year of the Rooster, why not pledge to make this a better year for roosters—along with their sisters—by refusing to support these ruthless industries with your consumer money. Since we are not natural carnivores, we have no requirement for flesh in our diet, and birds' eggs were never designed, or intended, to be food for anyone. They are simply part of a bird’s reproductive process.
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