A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

Bella and Freddie

From Zoe Rosenberg
Facebook posting, September 15, 2023

Petaluma Poultry can pretend that animals are things, that they are unfeeling products awaiting grocery store shelves. The reality is, things don't make friends. Products don't feel love. Commodities don't seek comfort in those around them.

I think about these two chickens often.

While investigating a Petaluma Poultry factory farm in Santa Rosa this past April, I found them. They were holding each other, finding comfort in this dark, miserable place. They sat like this for a long time, burrowing their heads in one another's feathers.

The harsh truth is, these two chickens are dead now. In early May, they would have been roughly grabbed and loaded onto transport trucks and driven to the Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse. In the stress and commotion of loading, I wonder if they were separated. It's likely they were. I also wonder if they both survived the journey to slaughter, many chickens arrive dead.

If they survived transport and arrived at the slaughterhouse, they would have been shackled upside down while they, most likely, screamed in terror. If it wasn't too dark, they would have seen their friends in front of them being electrocuted in a stun bath. Like many chickens at Petaluma Poultry, they may have tried to lift their heads, to avoid the water. If they did this successfully and remained un-stunned, they would have watched as their friends' necks slid over the sharp blades that slit their throats. They would have watched the blood pour down, and like any of us, they likely would have lifted their heads again to avoid the blade. If either one of these chickens did those things, things that would be perfectly reasonable to do in a situation like that, it is possible and even likely that they were boiled alive.

I hope they weren't boiled alive.

Petaluma Poultry can pretend that animals are things, that they are unfeeling products awaiting grocery store shelves. The reality is, things don't make friends. Products don't feel love. Commodities don't seek comfort in those around them. And because, clearly, these chickens are not things, not products, and not commodities—they deserve names. So today, let's give them names and let's all promise to remember them.

Based on their combs, I believe that one of them is a young hen and the other is a young rooster, so I will call them Bella and Freddie. I will hold my memory of them in my heart and promise to never forget, to fight until Petaluma Poultry is shut down and no more animals have to die brutal deaths at the hands of human greed.

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