Scientific Power of the Vegetarian Diet

Let’s first take a look at the humblest of all farm animals—chickens. Lisa in Montana describes the contented lives of her chickens in a lively portrait that contrasts sharply to the tortured existence of factory farm chickens:

 

My chickens are amazing and very curious creatures—I have nineteen. They love attention, but are very independent. Some are feisty, bossy or shy; some are bold as all get out (chasing back my dog, Cody); and some are wanderers. I might find one roosting in a tree half a mile away. I have four who come to the sound of their names. And each chicken seems to know her place in the scheme of her small chicken world.

 

They have a nice coop and a huge yard to peck and scratch in. When I walk around it, they follow me like little sheep, frantically swarming my legs as I toss stale bread, feed, fruit, or veggies. Inside the coop, their hay-filled roosts line the walls. They like the nests covered just so, protected from the curious eyes of the other chickens, and they will only lay where and when no one else is sitting. There are always a few who decide to sit and stay over the eggs in a particular nest. I call them the “stay-at-home moms.”

 

When I read about the chickens on a factory farm, I sat down and wept.

 

Factory farm broiler chickens (table chickens) never know a moment’s peace or contentment. From the day the baby chicks hatch, they are confined in windowless sheds, kept in the most crowded conditions imaginable. The noise—desperate squawks and squeals—is deafening. Hoppers, hanging from the roof, dispense food and water—no human is subjected to this harsh and oppressive environment and when humans do step inside they are wearing protective hazmat suits.

 

“Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission—to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

—Saint Francis of Assisi

 

In most parts of the world, factory farm birds do not see the natural light until the day they are taken out to be killed. During the first few weeks of their short lives, they are subjected to intense light for twenty-three hours a day in hopes that their systems will be fooled into signaling them to eat more; due to genetic manipulation and the content of their feed, ninety percent of these birds have trouble walking; normally a chicken lives about seven years, but in these hell holes they only live to be about seven weeks, time spent in a continuous state of distress and discomfort. No part of their natural biology is safe from intrusion and abuse.

​

The worst of the birds’ ordeal is, hands down, the foul air. Because of chronic overcrowding, the air the chickens breathe is full of ammonia, microorganisms, and dust from their droppings. The ammonia is so intense as to scorch their lungs; each breath brings discomfort. The vast majority of chicken farmers pump chickens full of antibiotics to keep them alive. People who live around the sheds are instructed to stay as far away from them as possible; the intense pollution is, as we have seen, a hazard to human health as well.

​

Due to chronic overcrowding, feather plucking and cannibalism are common in the sheds, so chickens must have their beaks removed. This is a gruesome process in which the baby bird is placed against a searing hot guillotine that slices off the beak. On average, thirty percent of the birds—billions of animals—are seriously injured at this point. These injuries are often so severe that the bird, suffering from chronic pain, does not eat enough and fails to thrive. Injured and ill birds are never removed from the shed, and instead are left to die slow and painful deaths.

 

“But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”

—Plutarch (AD 46-120)

 

In egg production, the male chicks are destroyed. Some companies gas the baby birds, but more companies stuff them into plastic bags, where they suffocate beneath the weight of the other sacks tossed over them. Others are ground up while still alive, to become food for their sisters.

 

The argument that a group of individuals is “all alike” has been used throughout human history as a justification for the oppression of that group. If all individuals are alike, then they become impersonal and killing them seems less wrong or horrendous. Chickens, whether intelligent or stupid, individual or identical, are sentient beings. They feel pain and experience fear. This, in itself, is enough to make it wrong to cause them pain and suffering.

—Jennifer Raymond

 

Laying hens also have a merciless, joyless existence. The birds’ cages, called batteries, are cruelly small. Four or five mature birds are placed in a twelve-by-twenty-inch cage—about the size of one and a half pieces of paper. Imagine that! Recently, due to public pressure, some egg producers have increased this cage size, but it is still a mercilessly tight fit. The bird is still unable to spread her wings. This will house the hen for as long as she lives; the tortures of the cage will be all she knows. It is troubling to note that in scientific experiments, whenever chickens were presented with the choice between freedom with no food and a cage with food, the chickens chose freedom.

 

“Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”

—Pope Benedict XVI

 

The floors of these cages tilt slightly to force the eggs forward and onto a conveyer belt, and the angle is very uncomfortable for the bird’s feet. Thousands of birds’ feet get stuck and begin to actually grow (an unimaginably painful process) around the wire cage.

​

In the battery cage, laying hens cannot stand comfortably. Even when one or two settle for a moment, the other birds are still in motion, so the comfortable position lasts only seconds. The noise level seems shot straight up from hell. The constant jostling and bumping into each other leads to plucking; after a short time, chickens lose their feathers. Their skin begins to rub raw against the cages, resulting in festering sores. Fear, feather loss, and pain are all part of the same syndrome, a syndrome that reflects a very sad life indeed, and one suffered billions and billions of times a year.

​

Both laying hens and broiler chickens face a gruesome end. The doors are finally flung open, and workers, wearing masks to protect their lungs, grab the birds and stuff them, squawking and in pain and terror, six or seven to a transport box. The boxes are stacked on top of each other. The creatures receive no food or water during this time, which can last for days.

​

Finally, upon reaching the slaughterhouse, the birds are taken out of the box and one by one hung upside down on a conveyer belt. They are brought, still crying out in fear and pain, to the place where their throats are slit. Chickens are sadly exempt from most nations’ humane slaughter laws. These billions of chickens are killed every year outside any regulatory and humane consideration whatsoever. While the slaughter itself is merciless, at last their joyless lives are over, the only mercy humans have shown them.

 

Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou Shall Not Kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life.

—Dick Gregory, comedian, civil rights activist

 

“I never liked killing pigs. I never did. And after Babe, I absolutely refuse to eat a pig.”

—Oprah Winfrey