7 Things You Didn’t Know About The Chicken Industry

Lately I have been amazed by the number of people around me who become interested in making changes to their diet such as reducing meat consumption or replacing certain recipes with vegetable products. I like few things as much as receiving this good news for animals from good friends, co-workers or people I train with.

I love being able to accompany other people in this process, for me it was key to have those who kindly shared their tricks with me, sent me information and they encouraged me to make the first steps easier.

However, in all these conversations there is usually a common phrase that always worries me: “I hardly eat meat anymore, I only eat chicken”.

And it is that generally, when the question of animals begins to haunt our heads, we tend to remove products such as “red meat” from our diet in the first place or those from animals that generate greater sympathy for us, such as lambs.

Of course you have to start with something, that’s why I applaud any attempt we decide to make to stand in solidarity with animals removing them from our menu. I also gradually became a vegan and it seems to me that it makes a lot of sense in a society where we suffer from serious misinformation regarding the reality of “farm” animals.

The question is that The chicken meat industry is one of the industries that generates the greatest suffering and where some of the worst practices of animal abuse take place.

7 reasons not to eat chicken meat

1. They are the most exploited land animals

Every year we kill 60 billion chickens., and is that due to its small size, a much larger number of animals is needed to satisfy the demand for consumption. To give us an idea, it takes more than 200 chickens to produce the same amount of meat as a single cow.

2. Living on the surface of a page

The conditions in which chickens raised on factory farms live are unimaginably cruel. They grow up on farms where thousands of them are forced to share the same space, they are crowded in such a way that a chicken spends its life on a surface equivalent to a sheet of paper or an iPad.

3. 41 days of life

The life expectancy of these animals is between 5 and 10 years (depending on the breed), however, the chicken meat that we find in supermarkets comes from animals that are only 41 days old, so they are really babies when they are sent to slaughterhouses.

4. They never see sunlight

In factory farms, chickens live with little or practically no natural light, in fact it is common for their sleep cycles to be disturbed through long periods of artificial lighting, generating significant stress and preventing them from resting.
The normal thing is that these animals only see sunlight once in their lives: when they go in the truck to the slaughterhouse.

5. Tons of excrement

Intensive rearing of millions of chickens each year produces tons of excrement, which significantly impacts the increase in fecal contamination of soil and water. Taking into account that these animals are fed with significant amounts of antibiotics and other drugs, the fecal contamination from chicken farms It is especially harmful to the environment.

6. A 700-pound baby

To supply the demand for chicken meat, these animals are forced to grow at a completely unnatural rate. Through genetic selection, humans have created the “broiler” breed, from which the vast majority of this meat comes. Broiler chickens reach a weight 6 times their natural weight in a short time, which causes them terrible suffering such as fractures in his legs from not being able to support his own body. If a human baby grew at the same rate, in two months it would weigh 300 kilos.

7. Sleeping on floors with ammonia

Due to the high density of animals, the floor of these buildings ends up damp and covered in droppings with a high concentration of ammonia. This generates painful lesions on their legs, eyes and skin, as well as serious respiratory problems.

Chickens are fascinating animals about which there are many false myths. Against the general ideas, more and more studies demonstrate its high sensitivity, as well as their ability to solve complex problems and transmit knowledge among their peers when they learn something new. Dr Chris Evans, an animal behavior specialist at Macquarie University in Australia, says: “As a trick in lectures, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about primates. ”.

However, when we get closer to its reality, we discover that we have turned their existence into a real nightmare for the taste of our palate.

When someone tells me they want to do something for animals, I always think of how much chickens need our solidarity.

Can send a clear message to these cruel industries if we remember the most forgotten among the forgotten when filling our shopping cart.