Animal Cruelty - Chickens

Cruelty in the
Animal Industry:
Living creatures being treated as mass-producing machines

Chickens:

Broiler Sheds

With tens of thousands of chicks

packed into each building, the sheds

become increasingly crowded as the

animals grow larger. Chickens often

have to walk on top of one another—

and over the bodies of others who

have died—to get to food and water.

Many chickens in factory farms get sick

and die because of the cramped and

filthy conditions. Instead of giving

their

birds more space and a cleaner living

area, farmers mix large quantities of

antibiotics into the birds’ feed

in an

attempt to stave off disease, but many

of the birds still die. A U.S. Department

of Agriculture study found

that greater

than 99 percent of chicken carcasses

are contaminated with E. coli bacteria,

largely because of

the filthy conditions

in the sheds where they are raised.

View video:

When their egg production drops, hens

are deprived of water and food for up

to 14 days at a time in order to

shock

their bodies into a period of increased

laying. This extremely cruel practice,

called “forced molting,”

causes birds to

lose their feathers and a significant

percentage of their body weight, and

many birds die from

hunger and

dehydration. The hen

below

was

rescued from a factory farm after her

body was devastated by

forced molting.

Battery Cages

The hens spend their entire lives in tiny wire “battery” cages, which measure roughly 18 inches by 20 inches

and hold five

to 11 hens who each have a wingspan of 32 inches. Each hen has an area smaller than a sheet

of notebook paper in

which to stand and doesn’t have enough space to spread even one wing. The cages are

stacked on top of one another,

so excrement from hens in higher cages often falls on those below. Ammonia

and the stench of feces hang heavy in the

air, and disease is rampant in these filthy, cramped conditions.