Chicken Injustices and Suffering

To take the life of any sentient being is to harm that being by depriving them of opportunities for fulfillment, even if it is done suddenly and painlessly.

We have no nutritional need for any animal product, so denying chickens their lives is unnecessary, as are the other forms of suffering.

Chickens, like all farmed animals, are allowed to live just a small fraction of their natural lifespans.¹

• Laying hens are slaughtered after about 18 months, living less than 20 percent of an 8-year natural lifespan.²
• Chickens used for meat are slaughtered at about 5 to 7 weeks, after living less than 2 percent of an 8-year natural lifespan.³
• Males from laying hens are slaughtered soon after hatching because they can’t lay eggs. Traditionally, they are ground with steel blades.⁴

Several methods of killing chickens are used, including manual throat slitting, neck-breaking, decapitation, and gassing, all of which are painful.

In the United States, where there are no federal regulations for chicken welfare, the industry claims that 99 percent of the birds are “totally unconscious” after an electrical stun, administered in some facilities just before slaughter.⁵

A study published in The Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science revealed that the chicken industry uses low-voltage stuns in order to avoid damage that might render the carcass unsellable. The low voltage stuns are not effective, which results in many (if not most) chickens being alive and fully conscious when their throat is slit, and many remain alive as they enter the scalding tank.^{6 7 8}

Because laying hens are bred specifically to lay eggs, males hatched from laying hens are not profitable—they don’t yield sufficient meat, and they can’t lay eggs.⁹

Because the males hatched from laying hens are not profitable, the males are ground alive in a macerator, gassed, or suffocated—all shortly after they hatch.¹⁰

The chicken industry refers to the practice of killing newly hatched males as chick culling (weak and struggling females are also discarded in this manner).¹¹

Hatchlings are about 50 percent male and 50 percent female. So statistically speaking, every laying hen has a brother who has been violently slaughtered. This is true even for backyard chickens, as the female hatchlings are sold not only to commercial producers but also to individuals keeping backyard chickens.

In the United States, around 260 million male chicks are slaughtered annually via culling.¹² Worldwide, it’s around 7 billion.¹³

Extreme crowding is the reality for the 98 percent of chickens living in factory farming conditions, regardless of whether they are in battery cages or not.¹⁶

Hens in battery cages spend their lives confined to a space smaller than the size of a standard sheet of paper.¹⁷

Chickens in commercial chicken houses may not be confined to a cage, but they are still entrapped by the mass of other chickens surrounding them, which is why Consumer Reports advises you to “ignore cage-free claims.”¹⁸

Despite failed and weak legislation at the federal and state levels,¹⁹ and despite the trend for producers and grocers to promise to go cage-free,²⁰ in the United States up to 95% of eggs are produced by chickens housed in battery cages.²¹

Crowding prevents or hinders chickens’ ability to engage in their natural behaviors of preening, roosting, perching, spreading their wings, establishing social order, pecking and scratching for food, and teaching their young to peck and scratch for food.²²

The denial of natural behaviors due to living in such close quarters results not only in discomfort but also the constant psychological stress of fear and anxiety.²³²⁴²⁵

The ammonia-laden air in the chicken houses is so noxious that the birds commonly suffer respiratory disorders, severe flesh and eye burns, and even blindness.²⁶

Videos and investigations document the filth and stench of urine, feces, feathers, and dander in chicken facilities. They show birds covered in feces and so weak that they cannot clean themselves. Some are stuck in manure so deep it could be described as a manure pit.²⁷²⁸

Numerous research papers and undercover investigation videos show that:^2930313233

• Sickness and disease are common.
• Some chickens are so sick you can hear them struggling to breathe.
• Some hens don’t have the strength to stand on their own two legs.
• Some are barely able to move or respond to anything around them.
• Birds are found dead, dying, and emaciated.

Laying Hens

• A laying hen produces more than 300 eggs a year, but the jungle fowl from which they are bred lay fewer than 10 eggs in a year. This causes both physical and psychological stress.³⁴
• The large increase in the number of eggs laid is from a combination of selective breeding and hens’ tendency to lay more eggs when eggs are removed so they can follow their instinct to form a proper brood.³⁵
• Laying hens are also bred to lay large eggs for which they have not naturally evolved, which stresses their reproductive system and causes such problems as osteoporosis, bone breakage, and uterus prolapse.³⁶

Broiler Chickens

The modern broiler chicken is unnaturally large and has been bred to grow at an unnaturally fast rate and have large breasts.³⁷

The selective breeding of broiler chickens comes with serious welfare consequences, including:³⁸

• leg disorders
• skeletal, developmental, and degenerative diseases
• heart and lung problems
• breathing difficulty
• premature sudden death

The debeaking of chickens:³⁹

• is painful
• causes lasting suffering
• impairs feeding
• eliminates exploratory pecking
• contributes to lice from impaired preening

When chickens raised for meat reach their desired slaughter weight, they are caught, crated, transported, unloaded, and placed in holding pens until slaughter.⁴⁰

Videos of chickens being transported or being prepared for transport show squawking birds being grabbed four at a time by their feet and roughly thrown or shoved into crowded crates, birds suffering dislocations and broken bones, wings and heads crushed in crates, birds dying from suffocation, hot and cold conditions, and birds unable to stand from exhaustion.⁴¹

A study published in Poultry Science reveals that in addition to the psychological stress of chickens being transported, it is not unusual for a chicken to experience dehydration, disease, injury, pain, and even death.⁴²

Injuries from rough handling and transport of chickens include wing and leg fractures, lesions, bleeding, and bruising.⁴³