Historically, male chickens were grown to adulthood and slaughtered for meat consumption. Female chickens obviously were used to provide eggs for your omelette breakfasts. With the advent of modern techniques, separate breeding lines for meat and egg production were developed. The male chicks in the egg-bearing group served no value--the cost of raising them outweighed the financial gains.
To eliminate this inefficiency, approximately 200 million male chicks are sent to their deaths every year very shortly after their birth. If these were people, we are talking about executing without cause the entire population of Brazil or Indonesia every year. What is even more disturbing than this poultry injustice, is the method to this madness--the chicks are sent into giant meat grinders alive. Clearly the bottom line here is economic, but does that justify this cruelty? If Congress can bail out Wall Street thugs, they can certainly allocate monies to make it worthwhile to raise these chicks to adulthood. Such subsidization would not only benefit the ill-fated chicks, but could be used to attack poverty and hunger both domestically and abroad.
Here is a video expose of this sick process (note: we are advocating awareness, not being a vegan):
I've seen a similar video and it's truly shocking. And this in a country and civilization that I have to grudgingly admit has a pretty decent record with animal rights, frequently a lot better than the rights accorded human beings. I think some of the Whale lovers and overfishing campaigners need to pay attention to their buffalo wings and chicken nuggets. Chickens aren't endangered, so it's somehow alright to put them in the grinder.
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