Issues | Chickens and Turkeys

Chickens & Turkeys

Birth and Early Life

Selective Breeding: Chickens raised for meat, known as broilers, are selectively bred to grow unnaturally fast and large. In just six to seven weeks, they reach a size that would take months under natural conditions. This rapid growth leads to painful health issues, including skeletal and metabolic disorders, heart problems, and crippled legs.
Male Chicks: Male chicks are deemed useless and are killed shortly after birth—often suffocated, decapitated, or ground up alive. Female chicks are kept for egg production but have their beaks sliced off with a hot iron to prevent aggression in overcrowded cages.
Debeaking: Debeaking, also known as beak trimming, is a common and cruel practice. To prevent birds from pecking each other in the stressful, overcrowded conditions of factory farms, a portion of their beaks is sliced off, often with a hot blade or infrared laser. This procedure is done without anesthesia, causing acute pain, as the beak is filled with sensitive nerves. The pain can persist long after the trimming, sometimes resulting in difficulty eating, drinking, and preening. Debeaking not only deprives chickens of their natural behaviors, such as foraging and pecking, but also leaves them in a constant state of discomfort, highlighting the industry's disregard for the welfare of these sentient animals.

Confinement and Overcrowding

Battery Cages: Layer hens are confined to battery cages, each bird given less space than a sheet of paper. They are crammed into small wire enclosures with up to eight birds, causing severe stress and aggression. The wire floors lead to painful sores, cuts, and broken bones.
Broiler Chickens: Broiler chickens are packed into dark, crowded barns, where they live in their own waste. Their rapid growth often leaves them unable to walk, causing some chickens to starve to death as they cannot reach food or water. The ammonia from their waste causes respiratory diseases and burns on their skin and eyes.

Forced Molting and Overproduction

Forced Molting: To force additional egg-laying cycles, hens are deprived of food, water, and light for up to 18 days. This practice shocks their bodies into producing more eggs but causes immense physical and mental stress, leading to weakened immune systems and death.
Overproduction: Broiler chickens are bred for oversized breasts and thighs, resulting in bodies that their bones cannot support. Many chickens experience heart failure or become crippled under their weight, leaving them to suffer in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.

Transport and Slaughter, Boiled Alive

Transport: When chickens and turkeys are ready for slaughter, they are roughly grabbed, stuffed into crates, and transported to slaughterhouses. Approximately 26 million chickens die each year during transport to slaughter. This accounts for about 0.25% of the billions of chickens transported annually. These deaths are often due to extreme stress, overcrowding, rough handling, temperature extremes, and lack of food or water during transit.
Slaughter Process: At the slaughterhouse, birds are hung upside down on metal shackles and dunked in an electrical bath intended to stun them. Due to the high-speed production line, many birds are not stunned properly and are still conscious when their throats are cut. According to the USDA, approximately 850,000 chickens and turkeys are boiled alive each year because they reach the scalding tanks without being slaughtered correctly.

Turkeys

In his recent book, Peter Singer exposes the systematic torment inflicted on tens of millions of Thanksgiving turkeys each year. Most of these turkeys are factory-farmed, subjected to conditions so grotesque they’re hard to comprehend. For anyone who has spent time learning about factory farming, the truth is often worse than imagined.

Consider this shocking description:

Genetic Engineering Gone Wrong

The turkey industry has genetically manipulated turkeys to grow abnormally large—up to 41 pounds by four months of age, compared to just 8 pounds for wild turkeys of the same age. These birds are so unnaturally large that they are physically incapable of mating.

To overcome this, the industry employs a process clinically referred to as “artificial insemination.” In practice, this means forcibly masturbating male turkeys to collect semen, then restraining female turkeys to inject the semen into them. Workers report that the process is traumatic for both the turkeys and the humans involved.

The Starvation of Breeding Turkeys

Parent turkeys, used for breeding, are systematically starved to prevent them from becoming even more obese than their offspring. These turkeys are fed only half the food they need, leaving them perpetually hungry, searching in vain for sustenance.

The Cruel Lives of Meat-Bound Turkeys

Turkeys raised for meat endure even more horrific conditions:

Debeaking and Mutilation: Their beaks, filled with nerve endings, are sliced off, along with other painful mutilations like removing their snoods and claw spurs.
Cramped, Filthy Sheds: Turkeys spend their lives confined to overcrowded sheds, lying in acidic feces that burn their skin and cause constant pain.
Electric Shocks: Turkeys attempt to perch as they would in nature, but electric wires around feeding and water lines deliver severe shocks to prevent this behavior.

Death and Slaughter

When it comes time for slaughter, the turkeys are meant to be stunned unconscious before their throats are slit. However, in the U.S., stunning isn’t required, so many turkeys are slaughtered while fully conscious.

Even worse, during bird flu outbreaks, turkeys are often killed en masse using a process called ventilation shutdown. This involves sealing the barn and pumping in steam, suffocating and roasting the turkeys alive—a method described as one of the most inhumane practices imaginable.

Why Opt Out of Turkey This Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving turkeys are the result of a process we’d unequivocally call sexual assault if inflicted on humans. These birds are bred into deformed, oversized bodies, mutilated, starved, and tortured in cramped, dark sheds. Their short lives are filled with pain, culminating in a death that is often as cruel as their lives.