The Chicken Flesh Industry
Chickens are arguably the most abused animal on the planet. Each year in the United States, 9 billion chickens are killed for their flesh, and 245 million hens are raised for their eggs. 7, 8 Ninety-nine percent of these animals spend their lives in total confinement— from the moment they hatch until the day they are killed.9 More chickens are raised and killed for food than every other farmed animal combined, yet not a single federal law protects chickens from abuse—even though two-thirds of Americans say that they would support such a law.10 Broiler Chickens
Chickens raised for their flesh, referred to as “broiler chickens” by the meat industry, spend their lives crammed into massive, windowless sheds that typically hold as many as 40,000 birds.11 Chickens can function well in groups of up to about 90, a number low enough to allow each bird to find his or her spot in the pecking order. In crowded groups of thousands, however, no such social order is possible, and in their frustration, they relentlessly peck at each other, causing injury and death. The intense confinement and overcrowding on factory farms also results in unimaginable filth and disease. A Washington Post writer who visited a chicken shed says that the “dust, feathers and ammonia choke the air in the chicken house and fans turn it into airborne sandpaper, rubbing skin raw.”12 Michael Specter, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, also visited a chicken shed and wrote, “I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.”13
These journalists could leave, but chickens are forced to breathe ammonia and particulate matter from feces and feathers all day long. Many suffer from chronic respiratory diseases, weakened immune systems, bronchitis, and “ammonia burn,” a painful eye condition.14 According to a report from the USDA, 98 percent of chicken carcasses are contaminated with E. coli bacteria by the time they reach the market, largely because of the filthy conditions in the sheds where they are raised.15 On factory farms, they are fed large quantities of powerful antibiotics to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them: Chickens are given nearly four times more antibiotics than human beings or cattle in the United States.16
In addition, chickens on today’s factory farms almost always become crippled because their legs cannot
support the weight of their bodies. In fact, by the age of 6 weeks, 90 percent of broiler chickens are so
obese that they can no longer walk.19 Many crippled chickens on factory farms die when they can no longer
reach the water nozzles. 7 Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., “Chicken Meat, Slaughtered/Prod Animals (1,000),” FAOSTAT Database, 2002. 8 Joy A. Mench and Paul B. Siegel, “Poultry,” South Dakota State University, College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences, 11 Jul. 2001. 9 John Robbins, M.D., The Food Revolution, Conari Press: Boston, 2001, p. 178. 10 David Moore, “Public Lukewarm on Animal Rights,” Gallup News Service, 21 May 2003. 11 Associated Press, “Waste Rules May Not Affect Small Farms,” Associated Press Online, 19 Dec. 2002. 12 Peter Goodman, “Eating Chicken Dust,” Washington Post, 28 Nov. 1999. 13 Michael Specter, “The Extremist,” The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2003. 14 Canadian Poultry Consultants Ltd., “Diagnosis of Poultry Disease,” 2005. 15 Motavalli. 16 Rich Hayes, “Antibiotics Overused in Chickens,” The Baltimore Sun, 23 Jul. 2001. 17 Robbins p. 196. 18 Robbins p. 195. 19 Robbins p. 196. |
Chickens are also genetically manipulated and pumped full of drugs to make them grow faster and
larger—the average breast of an 8-week-old chicken is seven times heavier today than it was 25 years ago.17
Because of this unnaturally accelerated weight gain, these very young birds frequently die from heart
attacks and lung collapse, something that would never happen in nature. According to Feedstuffs, a meat
industry magazine, “[b]roilers now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough
to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses.”18