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Of the ten billion land animals killed in America every year, around nine billion are chickens (340 million of them are hens in the egg industry). Factory farms stuff anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 birds in each warehouse. After just six to seven weeks of living in feces and urine, they're killed, soaked in a chlorine bath to remove the slime and odor from their carcasses and shipped to the grocery store, destined for your dinner plate.
Interestingly enough, the History Channel's MODERN MARVELS TV show aired a 43-minute episode in 2012 about the chicken industry. Fourteen minutes eight seconds into the show, the murderous ways of the free-range/freedom/organic industries are unwittingly exposed: The host stated: "After a productive life of 1-2 years, Nigel's chickens also endure what he calls their 'UNHAPPY DAY'." The owner of the California facility then admitted: "When these chickens have finished two years of laying here, the third year they really don't lay enough eggs to pay for their feed. So they have to go. We all have to pay our way. What happens to them? We have a good demand for spent chickens and they go to a slaughterhouse in Sacramento where they're processed for stewing chickens."
Egg farms also continually breed birds so they have a fresh supply of hens to lay eggs. But if babies in the hatchery turn out to be males, they're considered useless by-products because males don't lay eggs. These chicks are tossed ALIVE into the trash, crying out for their lost mothers, or thrown ALIVE into huge rendering machines so they can be ground-up and used as feed for other animals. The female chicks have portions of their beaks cut off while they're fully conscious to prevent them from pecking each other in their overcrowded environments. The beak mutilations keep the profit levels high because injured hens are inefficient egg-layers.
Furthermore, things that come out of a hen's cloaca, the singular hole of a bird's backside that serves as the poop-hole, pee-hole and egg-hole, are not sane breakfast choices. These unfertilized eggs, covered in shit sprinkles and urine splatter, are not food. Consuming an object that fell out of another species' asshole is not only disgusting, it's pure bestiality. This should make sane individuals cringe if they aren't being controlled by a deviant addiction to an animals' nether regions. However, since gonorrhea and syphilis mutated to humans hundreds of years ago after some demented folks fornicated with bovines and sheep, it's not surprising that egg-eaters are obsessed with the hen's asshole! If the aforesaid description didn't convince you that egg-eating is psychotic, maybe this video of a cloaca-in-action will (the deliciousness begins at 1:47).
Finally, even if someone had a hen living in their backyard or purchased eggs from facilities labeled "free-range, "freedom," "organic," "cage-free," "antibiotic-free," "hormone-free," "local," etc., consuming eggs is still wrong because exploiting a hen's body and stealing the eggs she produces are crimes of commodification. She is only being valued because people enjoy eating her ass-droppings. In order to obtain a hen, one must purchase her from a breeder. Breeders, obviously, don't produce wild hens which only lay around 17 eggs each year. Since this minute production would never satisfy the lust of bird-ass fetishists, hens have been genetically altered to lay AROUND 300 EGGS annually, which damages the cloaca and causes their egg production to taper off after 1-2 years. Then the hens are killed. Sadly, as the egg-farmer on the Modern Marvels TV show explained, animals must pay their way in the free-range market or in someone's backyard because no profiteer or egg-eater would keep a hen who didn't lay eggs! Moreover, even though their bodies have been genetically altered to produce hundreds of eggs unnaturally every year, hens still have a DESIRE to lay eggs in an attempt to procreate and become a mother. When eggs are STOLEN, their desire prompts them to lay even more eggs, which depletes calcium from their bodies as calcium is the main component of an egg’s shell. This makes hens calcium-deficient, forcing them to eat the shell neurotically to regain lost calcium.
Have you also noticed that people never order the Grand Slam turtle-egg omelet or Canada Geese meat-lovers scramble at Denny's? That's because the egg industry chose hens as its victim a long time ago, and THEIR eggs have been marketed to the masses as food. People are addicts to eggs and other animal products, and addicts are ALWAYS irrational when it comes to their habits. Have you ever known an alcoholic, a cigarette smoker, or a heroin user to be rational when it came to alcohol, cigarettes, or heroin? Of course not. And there is NO such thing as a rational—or ethical—meat, dairy, or egg-eater when it comes to animal issues and whether humans should be enslaving, murdering and eating animals.
Scamming Customers with “Cage-Free” / “Free-Range ” / “Organic” Nonsense
Lately and quite laughably, authors Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Mark Bittman have been making outrageous claims that free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/local animal products are healthy. But don't be fooled by these well-spoken liberal hypocrites who are nothing but simple-minded, unenlightened meat, dairy and egg-eating addicts. Whether animals reside in spacious meadows eating pesticide-free grass or overcrowded warehouses swallowing genetically-engineered corn and soy feed, your risk for osteoporosis, heart disease, kidney ailments, diabetes, cancer and other illnesses remains the same. There's no such thing as healthy meat, dairy and eggs, just as there's no such thing as healthy cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco!
But more to the point, since the meat, dairy and egg industries exist to make money, ALL animals raised on free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/local farms—including chickens—fare no better than those held captive in huge factory farm facilities. That's because when it's time to sell their dismembered body parts for consumption, all animals—including those killed via religious-based kosher and halal-style throat-slicings—are chopped up into pieces at a slaughterhouse. This fact seems to elude people who only condemn factory farms, and embrace the other environments. "Buying local" seems to be the latest gimmick that places a halo around people who support the enslavement and murder of animals, which is akin to the slick public relations talk which claims that hunters are saints because they donate deer meat to food banks. When price and volume are taken into consideration, it's far more effective feeding hungry people rice, beans, vegetables and tofu. Thank goodness the world's largest feed-the-hungry organization—Food for Life Global—understands this and only uses vegan food. I agree with the buying local philosophy when fruits, vegetables and other plant-based products are in play. But purchasing the cut-up corpses of locally murdered animals—or the disgusting things that ooze (milk and eggs) from their bodies—is just as evil as supporting it from afar. (Moreover, why is the buying local way of life only applied to foods? I've noticed that these folks don't mind spending money on computers, cell phones, TV sets, furniture, clothes, cars and other materialistic items from companies located in other states or countries.)
Were you also aware that animals in the meat, dairy and egg industries receive no legal protection whatsoever? After all, how could slavery and slaughterhouses co-exist with freedom and protection? Here's an excerpt from section two of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the federal law that oversees animal-use in America: "When used in this act, the term "animal" ... excludes farm animals, such as, but not limited to, livestock and poultry used or intended for use as food ..." That's pretty cute, isn't it? The animals who are enslaved or eaten aren't even recognized as animals under the law. Does this remind you of another piece of legislation that ignored the victims and existed to shield victimizers from prosecution? When the Constitution was first enacted, only land-owning, slave-owning, white men of European descent were protected. Blacks, Natives, women and many others were conveniently excluded.
The Animal Welfare Act, kosher and halal-style killings—and the free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/buying-local marketing terms—are used to manipulate people into thinking that meat, dairy and egg production can be done happily and humanely. But there is no such thing as happy and humane slaughter just as there is no such thing as happy and human rape, happy and humane slavery, or happy and humane child molestation. From the animals' point of view, anyone who commodifies their bodies is equally vicious. Most people are unaware that Himmler, the Gestapo Commander who created the Jewish Holocaust's gas chamber system, almost fainted when he watched 100 Jews being shot to death in his honor. The Jewish Virtual Library states: "Subsequent to this experience, he ordered as a more humane means of execution the use of poison gas in specially constructed chambers disguised as shower rooms." If Himmler were still alive, I am sure he'd love to have a meal with the "humane" meat, dairy and egg-eating assholes who perpetuate his insane beliefs. And if for some reason my aforesaid words aren't proof enough of the terrorism claims I'm lodging against the meat, dairy and egg establishments—and the people who consume these products—maybe the billions of dead, dismembered animal bodies consumed annually could count as proof.
This Is How Chickens Are Supposed to Live
(The linked thumbnail image showing the machine-decapitation of a chicken is courtesy of Occupy for Animals.)