Poultry face world’s worst injustices
There is a terrible injustice going on in New Zealand. In terms of numbers of victims and severity of suffering, it is more widespread, pointless and horrific than the worst human atrocities.
I am talking about the treatment of non-human animals. Not deliberate sadism, but routine torment. Animals slaughtered not for sadistic pleasure but for the equally unnecessary pleasures of the palate.
In New Zealand, 125 million chickens and other poultry are slaughtered each year. About the same as the number of humans killed in every war, conflict, gulag, holocaust, and purge of the 20th century.
Farmed chickens are not natural creatures. They are genetic freaks, bred to be clinically obese and fastgrowing. The worldwide commercial chicken industry relies on only a few breeds, selected for rapid growth, not resilience. Almost all commercial New Zealand chickens are fast-growing cobb and ross breeds.
A government report from
2006 found that in New Zealand,
38 per cent of these Cobb and Ross chickens suffer from painful lameness, more even than in Europe. Lameness in poultry has been described by Dr John Webster, Professor of Animal Welfare from Bristol University, as ‘‘the single most severe, systematic example of man’s inhumanity to another sentient animal’’.
The 2018 code of welfare for chickens fails to address fastgrowing breeds as a welfare issue. The poultry industry denies that fast-growing breeds suffer leg deformities, in spite of decades of scientific evidence to the contrary.
It is not only the bird’s legs that collapse. Their hearts strain to pump blood through their bloated bodies, and this leads to heart attacks and painful ascites (abnormal fluid buildup). Up to
12 per cent of chickens collapse and die before reaching slaughter weight.
Nor are these conditions improved by rearing poultry in free-range or organic conditions. Health problems are genetic, not related to husbandry. Slowergrowing breeds have fewer health problems, but these are not available commercially in New Zealand.
Any birds that survive until slaughter are scooped up and shipped to the slaughterhouse, where they face fresh torments, including shackling upside down by the legs. Researchers examining the pain receptors in the legs of broiler chickens conclude that shackling is a ‘‘very painful’’ procedure.
The New Zealand Code of Welfare requires all animals to be effectively stunned before slaughter.
A combination of high line speeds, struggling chickens, and varying current means that stunning is missed in up to
60 per cent of cases. A survey of stunning systems in Europe found that fully conscious chickens feel the knife, and the subsequent agony from being scalded alive. There is no reason why this would be any different in New Zealand, which uses the same system on the same birds.
Animal protein is as unnecessary to human health and life as rodeos, bullfighting and other abuses. Prospective cohort studies are finding increasing evidence that animal meat is not only unnecessary, it is positively unhealthy. Deaths from cancers, high blood pressure and all-cause mortality are consistently higher in meat eaters.
Intensive animal farming is destructive to the planet, causing global climate change, water pollution and habitat depletion. Chicken farming, in particular, sows the seeds for future pandemics. We can see this danger today with fresh bird-flu outbreaks in the United Kingdom.
The international ‘‘Veganuary’’ movement encourages people to try plant-based food for January. Why not make this your New Year resolution?