Hy-Line hatchery is the world's largest producer of chicks for the egg-laying industry and embryos for vaccinations. Their "products" include: Hy-Line W-36 (world's most efficient layer!); Hy-Line Brown (pretty and balanced, an excellent combo!); Hy-Line W-98 (quick to mature, pops out big eggs); Hy-Line Silver Brown (she's silver. and brown!); and the Hy-Line Gray (tinted eggs is her specialty). It's great when living, sentient, intelligent beings are referred to as "products", really allows for us to disconnect from the cruelties we inflict upon them.
To say Hy-Line is a behemoth is an understatement, it is The Standard, the industry go-to corporation when it comes to egg productions, genetics, vaccine research and all the ways humans can use chickens to satiate or benefit humans. The company has a huge reach across the world with production facilities in dozens of countries.
So when you watch this video, know that it is not abnormal. It is not the outlier, it is the standard, the bell curve normal. This is what your average sorting facility looks like and this is what happens to your average male chick and your average female chick.
According to the AVMA's euthanasia guidelines, maceration is a really great death. It's so good that if you scroll down to its entry on page 17, you'll notice it's even underlined, that's just to emphasize is awesomeness. No one is signing their sick puppies or kittens up for this "good death" but it is how most of the 200+ million male chicks are killed in this country and across the globe, animals who have the same ability to experience fear and pain, perhaps even more so as sensitive, young animals.
Now, it very well may be true that maceration is more instantaneous, less painful than gassing or suffocation, a couple other methods of killing male chicks. Which misses the point, that male birds should not be killed at all - we don't need eggs to survive, we don't need those poor debeaked hens to produce eggs and thus we don't *need* male chicks to be grinded up alive or suffocated or gassed. It's an unnecessary cruelty that you can help stop - don't eat eggs, start today. You won't find a commercially viable egg farm where male chicks are not killed, where hens are not slaughtered at a young age. So why contribute to what is, by most people's moral compass, an unethical and cruel way to treat, raise, house, manage, kill nonhuman animals?
Mercy for Animals produced this undercover investigation - thank you! Visit their website ChooseVeg.com for recipes and reasons to commit yourself to an animal, health and earth friendly diet.
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6 comments:
Ok well unless you, yourself, are going to be willing to take every single male chicken home, or to some "chicken haven" what else do you suggest that they do? The male chickens serve absolutely no purpose to the industry, there is no profit in them. If the hatcheries did keep them and feed them they would be losing money every day and billions of it at that. So unless you are going to take each and every one of them or pay to feed them there is nothing else you can do.
@AMarie: Sure there is something I can do. Something you can do.
Don't eat eggs.
It really is that simple. We have choices we can make and, when it comes to our food choices, each one we make has the potential to create real change for animals. Or our choices can just reinforce "business as usual" and we ca do what you just did in your comment - foist responsibility onto another entity instead of onto the egg industry and consumers, shrug your shoulders and move on.
Choices.
Or if you live in an area that allows it, you could consider adopting a couple of hens as pets (they're very sweet animals)--don't get a rooster--fix up a comfy coop and outdoor area where your hens can take sunbaths and scratch, and you'll have all the fresh delicious eggs you could want as a natural byproduct of their daily happy life. Chicks don't need to be a byproduct of egg production ~ eggs will be laid either way (fertilized by a rooster or unfertilized) and I would think most people prefer to eat unfertilized eggs anyway. Eggs don't need to come from a factory farm or a grocery store. And if you can't or don't want to keep hens, there may very well be a local farmer, rancher, person with some chickens, or stand at the local farmer's market that you could purchase fresh eggs from. This kind of suffering doesn't have to happen.
AMarie - many people aren't adopting babies with disabilities. Should they be slaughtered? Many people don't visit their parents in nursing homes. Should we just kill them? Why can't you just admit that this is a horrific way to treat a living creature and the practice should be stopped? How about that as something "you can do?"
AMarie, it is people like you that are ignorant, and make ignorant comments like that is the reason these people continue to do this to innocent animals. They are being breeded unwillingly by the way to just be tossed aside like some selfish humans do to their unborn children. They didn't ask to be brought into this world.
I'm horrified most by our lost compassion for other life forms. True, it is supply and demand, but I think if all consumers were more aware of exactly the pressures we put on the "unethical" food system, the demand would surely decrease for this way of doing things. My heart breaks to see how the chicks fall and are left to suffer as if some object. I didn't originally object to eating animal products IF they were treated decently during their sad lives of service to us, but Knowledge is Power and I refuse to support this disheartening act. So sad.....
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