Should chickens be added to the Humane Slaughter Act?

Yes

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by Heather Moore

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Most people don't know chickens as well as they know dogs and cats, but these gentle birds can feel happiness, loneliness, fear, and pain, just the same as our furry friends. In their natural surroundings, chickens spend their day foraging for food, making nests, roosting in trees, and taking sun and dust baths. They exist in stable social groups and can recognize each other by their facial features. Like us, chickens form strong family ties and mourn when they lose a loved one. A mother hen will turn her eggs as many as five times an hour and cluck to her unborn chicks, who will chirp back to her and to one another.

Chickens are no birdbrains. They have at least 24 distinct cries to communicate, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is traveling by land or sea. According to Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, chickens have cognitive abilities "beyond the capacity of small children." The PBS documentary The Natural History of the Chicken revealed that chickens like to watch television and have vision similar to humans. A study by the Biophysics Group at Silsoe Research Institute in England found that chickens can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control.

Chicken s are remarkable animals, yet approximately nine billion of them are slaughtered for food every year in the United States. Because chickens, turkeys, and other birds are not protected under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the only federal law that offers any sort of protection to farmed animals, abuse runs rampant in "poultry" plants.

Before they are slaughtered and served in an extra value bucket, chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds that stink of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste. They have no access to fresh air or sunlight and they are given barely any room to moveeach bird lives in the amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of paper. Many of them suffer from respiratory diseases, bacterial infections, crippled legs, heart attacks, and other serious ailments.

They have their sensitive beaks seared off with hot blades and routinely suffer broken bones from being bred to be top heavy, from callous handling when workers roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them into crates, and from being shackled upside down at slaughterhouses.

By the time they're old enough for slaughter, their bodies are so fragile that their bones snap when they are grabbed and stuffed in crates for transport. During slaughter, their throats are cut and they are often dumped in a tank of scalding water while they're still conscious.

Sadistic Chicken Suppliers

Tyson Foods is the largest chicken producer in the United States and the largest supplier of birds for KFC restaurants. An investigator from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization, obtained undercover footage showing workers at a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse in Heflin, Ala., ripping the heads off live chickens and scalding them alive. (The footage can be seen at http://torturedbytys on.com/).

PETA's investigator repeatedly complained to Tyson supervisors that line speed of more than 12,000 chickens per hour made it impossible to prevent birds from being scalded alive and mutilated while they were still conscious, but was told that allowing 40 chickens per shift to be scalded alive was acceptable.

Lester Friedlander, who worked as a slaughter line inspector for the USDA for more than 10 years and was named USDA Veterinary Trainer of the Year in 1987, confirmed that PETA's undercover footage was representative of the entire chicken industry.

Virgil Butler, a former employee at a Tyson Foods plant in Grannis, Ark., saw birds being blown apart by dry ice bombs, intentionally scalded to death by the hundreds, and ripped out of their shackles, leaving one leg still hanging, several hundred times a day.

Sadly, Tyson Foods is not the only bad egg in the chicken industry. Pilgrim's Pride Corporation is the second largest chicken producer in the U.S. and another top supplier to KFC. Another PETA investigator caught workers at a Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse in Moorefield, W. Va., stomping birds, kicking them, and slamming them against floors and walls. The workers ripped the animals' beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and tied their legs together "for laughs."

Compassion Over Killing, an animal protection organization based near Washington, D.C., sent an undercover investigator to a Showell, Md. slaughterhouse run by Perdue Farmsanother KFC supplier. The investigator allegedly saw a worker slap a chicken in the face repeatedly during a break in the kill line, a worker picking up chickens and throwing them against the shackles, a worker who "spiked" a chicken onto the conveyor belt, pretending he had scored a touchdown, and more. Despite Perdue's claim on its Web site that "[i]ndividuals handling poultry must be trained in animal husbandry," the investigator had never received any such training.

Stop Chicken Farm Cruelty

Chickens cannot be raised and slaughtered in a way that is completely without sufferingthe sheer number of animals required to feed society's current meat habit makes individual attention to the animals' wants and needs impossible. Animals on free range farms generally fare no better than those on factory farms. They are poorly regulated and claims such as "free range" and "organic" are hard to substantiate. These labels often do little more than lull consumers into a false sense of security that the food they buy was humanely produced.

PETA believes that the real solution to this problem is for people to go vegetarian, but nevertheless supports any action that will help reduce animal suffering. For people who are not ready to adopt a plant-based diet, PETA is simply asking them to boycott KFC until the company takes a few simple steps to ensure that the 850 million chickens raised for its restaurants every year are treated a bit better.

As the leader in the chicken industry, KFC has the responsibility to ensure that chickens raised for its buckets are protected from the worst cruelties. KFC's insistence on more humane standards would mean that major chicken suppliers, such as Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, and Perdue Farms, would also be forced to set better animal welfare standards.

PETA and independent animal welfare experts are urging KFC to demand that its suppliers implement a kinder method of chicken slaughter: controlled-atmospher e killing (CAK). This method puts chickens to sleep by removing the oxygen from their environment and replacing it with an inert gas, like nitrogen or argon. It is much more humane than slicing open the throats of conscious animals and often scalding them alivethe current method of chicken slaughter in the U.S. and most Western countries.

McDonald's has already implemented CAK for chickens in some of its European slaughterhouse suppliers and is looking to use the technology in the U.S. as well.

PETA and other caring consumers are also asking KFC to take the following steps to reduce animal suffering:

* Adopt the "Animal Care Standards" program, which covers issues such as ammonia concentration, lighting conditions, and living space in chicken sheds. It also prohibits intentional starvation and states that birds must be provided with mental and physical stimulation.

* Use mechanized chicken catching, which causes less bruising and fewer broken bones;

* Breed leaner, healthier, less aggressive birds instead of breeding the biggest, fattest birds possible;

* Stop feeding chickens antibiotics and other drugs for nontherapeutic purposes;

and

* Make welfare standards transparent and verifiable. A meaningful animal welfare program must be verified by announced and unannounced independent third-party audits, the results of which must be made available to the public.

Even though all of the aforementioned changes are supported by KFC's own animal welfare advisors, KFC has steadfastly refused to make the improvements. If consumers can help pressure KFC to implement these guidelines, it will make a world of difference to the animals.

Please visit KentuckyFriedCruelty .com to find out what you can do to help.

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