We have nothing but respect and admiration for vegans and vegetarians, particularly those who make it a point to prioritize the lives of animals over their own taste for meat, cheese, and eggs. However, there’s also nothing wrong with *not* being a vegetarian or a vegan — as long as you confront the fact that eating meat should fall in line with your ethical and environmental values. In other words, eating meat shouldn’t be taken lightly, and this post is full of images that prove it. If you’re going to consume things like beef, pork, or poultry, you should also be able to accept head-on the harsh realities of factory farming, and then hopefully find alternatives in the meat section at the supermarket. As documented by the information below, factory-farmed chicken live incredibly dark, brief lives — all so they can end up on your dinner table in less than two months time. The process they go through is inhumane, and definitely makes the case for obtaining your meat from smaller farms where animals are treated well, fed healthy organic diets, and allowed to graze and practice their natural animal habits before being humanely slaughtered. As you’ll see below, that’s totally different from what happens to factory farmed chickens, and the reality of their lives is hard to see.And while we’re not here to pass moral judgment on those who eat meat or choose not to eat meat, there are some harsh realities of factory farming that we should all know about.
This footage is from another factory chicken farm, taken secretly by an animal rights worker on the conveyor belt line.
Workers sort through thousands of chicks during “quality” control. The heads of weaker chicks are torn off while the baby chicks are still alive and thrown into a trash bag. Sadly, some of them aren’t even dead before they are thrown away.
But as you’ll see later, they really aren’t lucky at all.
Then they’re thrown down a rotating hole for sorting.
The chicks are packed in so tightly, none of them can really move.
All of the chicks are stored in dark cupboards the first day, and then sent to industrial farms and pumped with growth hormones to grow into full-size chickens in just 40 days.
If you love chicken and want to eat meat, there are ways to obtain it that have nothing to do with factory farming. Organic-fed, humanely-raised chickens might be a bit pricier, but it definitely helps assuage some of the guilt of consuming these animals.
If you think that factory-raised chickens don’t deserve the short and brutal life they lead, or if you want to make sure that the chicken you’re eating is raised in good conditions in safe environments, it’s important to get in touch with the USDA.
