Grinding of live male chicks is finally news; Have we turned a corner on animal cruelty?

September 2nd, 2009
Male Chicks

Male Chicks

Sometime around 1991 or so, I watched a video on factory farming that changed my life drastically and permanently. Among many horrific images of animal cruelty, was the sight of hundreds of unneeded male chicks being dumped into a grinder at a layer hen hatchery. Males have no value to the egg industry so they are disposed of as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Nearly 20 years later, I see this headline in my Yahoo News: Baby chicks ground alive by poultry producer: activists. My first thought, was “Yeah, no kidding. This is news?” And my next thought was, “Wow, this is finally news!”

This practice of grinding up male chicks is surely at least as old as factory farming. The “news” part is that Mercy For Animals recently caught it on tape. Of course, it was caught on tape 20 years ago or more as well. But hey, whatever gets the information out there is fine with me.

It’s really quite amazing that this made national headlines. Usually to get an animal issue even in the local paper, you have to take your clothes off, or set something on fire. What does it say for the animals and for our society that a common practice of factory farming has now made national headlines simply because a concerned person went inside with a camera?

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