Chicken Brutality

Chicken Brutality

Dulce Colon

            There are more than eight billion chickens that are raised in brutal farms. In comparison, there are a fewer amount of chicken that are raised in free range farms. These brutal farms are factory warehouses, where up to four chickens, also referred to as hens are placed in a four inch cage. At free range farms chickens are allowed to go outside and are not kept inside the cramped cages.

            You know how when you are sleeping and having a nightmare you can just wake up from it?  Well here is a nightmare in which you cannot wake up from. In our world there are billion of chickens that are constantly being abused at factory farms, in ways you never thought of. These chickens are being abused by health situations and in the way they are handled. From the moment the chickens hatch, the end of their beaks are cut off and are done without the use of anesthesia. I want you to picture yourself as a chicken. Now picture yourself having the end of your nose removed. Can you feel the blade cutting through the bone, cartilage and soft tissue? It’s painful! The farmers have the chicken’s beak removed to reduce the injuries from the chickens’ over-pecking, based on boredom. Once the chicken’s beaks are removed they are placed in extremely cramped cages that allow little to no movement. These cages are stacked and lined up in a very huge room, rows after rows of caged chickens. These chickens are kept in cages 24-7 and are not able to engage in their normal behavior.

            Being kept in an extremely small cage is not the only thing they have to suffer from. Their living environment is the dirtiest place you can imagine where the chickens are becoming sick from living in the un-kept cages. If you think about it they are eating each others feces because when they poop their feces drop down to the cage below landing in the other chicken’s food. If the chickens are eating each others feces they are bound to get sick, which they do. If one chicken gets sick they all get sick, right? Eventually the diseases spread from one chicken to another because the farmers don’t take the time to remove the contaminated chicken from the others. Some chickens also suffer from heart failure and the lack of lung development. The sad thing is the farmers don’t want to waste money on hiring a veterinarian to take care of the sick chickens. Instead they are forced to slowly die from injures and illness. According to an investigation completed by the Mercy for Animals, chickens also suffer from, “raging eye and sinus infection, mechanical feather damage, pasturela, paralysis, vitamin deficiency, enlarged vents, wing hemetones, and blindness.”

            Once the chickens have reached their potential size and / or can no longer lay eggs they are sent to the slaughter house. When the chickens reach the slaughter house alive, they are shackled and hanged by their feet. They are then taken to be killed by having their heads cut off by hand or by machine and then are placed in tanks of scalding water. What you don’t know is that some of these chickens are place in the tanks of scalding water alive. At the slaughter house 8,400 chickens are killed every hour!

            Free range chickens have a healthier life compared to factory chicken because they are not kept in cages. These chickens can freely enter and leave their hen house, into a vast opening of a green field. Free range chickens are handled with care and are in a cleaner environment. Unlike caged chickens they are not eating each others feces so they have less chances of becoming sick. If you went to a free range farm you will not see chickens with missing wings or legs. You will not see dead chickens in a cage with three other chickens or their hen house covered in each other’s feces or clustered of feathers littering the floor.

What I wonder is why can’t all chickens be raised in free range farms? If chickens where always raised in free range farms we would not be seeing a lot of chickens on the shelves of our food markets. But the most important question I have is why can’t the Animal Cruelty Law also apply to farm raised animals? Last I checked the animals that end up on our plates still have a right to be treated with care!