Life in the chicken farm

Continuing our series on vegetarianism

By Mahipali

One of the most grotesque and perverse creations of factory farming is that fat, unnatural creature called the broiler chicken. Its whole existence from birth to death is one of unmitigated cruelty.

How blunted have our sensibilities become that we are not even faintly aware how our eating habits encourage the evil of creating this pathetic animal? In all so-called developing countries broiler consumption is spreading like a blight and is touted as a shining example of nutritional progress (which it certainly is not).

Forty seven million broiler chicks were killed in Sri Lanka alone in 1998. That's 47 million complex sentient beings. To make one pound of this chicken meat you have to spend 5 pounds of nutritionally superior plant protein. If indeed this is development, the less we have of it the better. But enough. Let us listen to the broiler's story in its own words:

"One of the greatest blessings for any living being is the warm security its mother provides in its childhood. As for me, I never got a chance to see my mother - not even on the first day of my life. All of us male chicks born on that day were mechanically selected and thrown into a special lot. Fifty of us were herded into a cage four feet long and three feet wide. We were "day-old-chicks" to be brought up as 'broilers'.

"We spent the first week of our life cramped in this little space, ten of us sharing an area no bigger than a newspaper page. We were given vitamins and antibiotics and special feed to make us grow fast. That was no consolation, for it made us grow too heavy for our legs. In our cramped condition there was hardly room to spread out our wings. They arranged this on purpose, because we wouldn't grow fat if we moved about too much.

"In about ten days, we had grown too big for our little cage. Thereafter we were moved to several larger cages at regular intervals. This in no way improved our lot, for we too had grown proportionately larger; so the new cages did not give us any greater space. We continued to get the same fattening treatment.

"Imprisoned inside wire mesh, we never got a chance to set foot on the soil of this earth, leave alone scratching it and finding our own food. Normal chicks love to dust-bathe. But there was no dust in our prisons, nor was there even a bit of straw to lie down upon with some comfort. We just had to stay put at the same place day in and day out. This caused great stress and we often pecked one another out of sheer boredom. To stop this they cut off a part of our beaks with a hot knife or some such device. For weeks we had to suffer the intense pain this created. You might not know that a chick's beak has sensitive tissue and is a very important part of its physiognomy.

"Our cages lay one on top of another. When chicks on the upper cages defecate, the faeces would fall through us and rest on the ground below. The stench of ammonia that this produces is extremely hurtful to our eyes. Some of us go blind because of it.

"Life in our last cage continued in this fashion for 3 to 4 weeks. Things were so manipulated that at six weeks we would normally weigh one and three quarter kilograms. At this fateful weight it is time to murder us. They slit your neck or break the neck bone and immediately pitch you into boiling water for easy removal of feathers. Very soon my short life too will come to an end in the same manner.

"The treatment given to my mother, whom I have never seen, is not much different. As she does not have to grow as fast as a broiler, and the factory wants her to lay as many eggs as possible during her life-time, she is given food of quite a different kind. Her cage is kept lit most of the time to simulate daylight. Her biological rhythm goes haywire and she lays eggs continuously - many times the number a normal, free ranging hen produces. When she has lived thus for about 18 months, from the factory point of view her 'productive life' is over, and she too suffers the same fate as all the rest of us.

"After we have gone through our final ordeal, you would be able to buy my dead body, from a shop freezer in your town or village, neatly wrapped as "broiler chicken". My mother's dead body too will be available as "curry chicken".

"What wrong have we done to you that you want to inflict this cruelty on us? Is it not far better, much more decent, not to bring us into this world to be heartlessly reared solely for you to eat our carcasses? Please remember that each time you buy our meat, you are perpetrating a crime against an innocent creature who has done you no harm. Please use a little imagination, and as the Great Teacher the Buddha advised, try to put yourself mentally in our place. Then you will realise the enormity of your crime and the callousness it breeds in you , which is no good to you, your family and your fellow human beings".

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