Chickens.
They are everywhere.
Their meteoric rise in number over time makes them 70% of all birds alive right now on Earth,
23 billion or so, all born for their meat, or the eggs they produce.
Together with turkeys, they are 99% of all land animals slaughtered for food in the United
States, with an estimated 55 billion killed worldwide yearly.
That is 5,400,000 every hour or around 1,500 every second.
So, what prompted humans to produce and kill so many chickens?
Did you know they are a lot smarter than we think and have the ability to dream like humans?
Do you know how the chickens we consume are raised and treated?
Time is over for egg-scuses.
The truth is no yolk; let’s find out now.
Chickens (Gallus domesticus) are domestic birds that cannot fly.
There are over 150 different breeds that come in various colours, patterns, and sizes.
Let’s not get into what came first - the chicken or egg; let’s start by looking at
the amazing way a chick develops and is born from an egg….
It takes 24 to 26 hours for a hen to construct an egg.
Once a yolk is fully developed, it is released from the ovary into the oviduct, which is
made up of five different sections.
The first stop is the infundibulum, which, in addition to being fun to say, is a short,
muscular portion of the oviduct which engulfs the ovum, or yolk, that is released from the
ovary.
The ovum remains in the infundibulum for 15 to 18 minutes, and it is here where fertilisation
would occur if the hen mated with a rooster.
However, eggs sold for human consumption are not fertilised.
The next stage occurs in the magnum, the largest section of the oviduct at 13 inches long.
The yolk stays in the magnum for 3 hours while the albumen, or “egg white,” is added.
The third stop is the isthmus, where the inner and outer shell membranes are added over a
period of 75 minutes.
The longest stage of egg production occurs in the shell gland or uterus.
This is where the shell is deposited around the egg, which takes 20 plus hours.
Eggshells are mostly made of calcium carbonate, and for each shell produced, the hen must
lose approximately 10% of the calcium stored in her bones.
The last stop in egg production is the vagina.
This is where a coating of mucus is added to the shell.
The vagina pushes the egg out through the vent or cloaca - the shared exit through which
urine, faeces, and eggs are excreted.
If the egg was fertilized, a baby chicken hatches after about 21 days and is known as
a chick.
After 16 weeks, they are usually fully developed adults.
Males are known as roosters and females as hens.
Chickens are surprisingly intelligent animals.
They can perceive time intervals, anticipate future events, recall the location of a hidden
object, and recognise over 100 individual faces, not only of fellow chickens but of
humans.
They also pass down knowledge from generation to generation.
Chickens are caring and sensitive animals who feel joy, loneliness, frustration, fear,
and pain.
They experience rapid eye movement, or REM, during sleep; an indication that they dream
akin to humans, and that their minds may be wandering far from the walls of the factory
farms where they are imprisoned.
Mother hens begin communicating with their chicks before they even hatch.
While the babies are still inside their shells, the mother hen clucks softly to them, and
they chirp back.
Chickens also purr when they’re petted, like cats.
This communication is done with more than 24 vocalisations, and each one has a distinct
meaning.
The history of chickens is similarly fascinating.
Chickens are, in fact, modern dinosaurs.
A comparison of the amino-acid sequence from T-Rex collagen showed that it shared a remarkable
similarity to that of chickens.
The T-Rex is actually more closely related to chickens than alligators.
Chickens were first domesticated from a wild form called red junglefowl, in Southeast Asia
and China as early as 10,000 years ago.
By about 2000 BCE, they appeared at Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley and, from there, they
spread into Europe and Africa.
In 1944, Howard C. Pierce, the poultry research director for the A&P Food Stores supermarket
chain, told a poultry meeting in Canada that someone needed to develop a larger chicken
with a breast like a turkey.
By the next summer, his wish ignited the Chicken of Tomorrow contest, organised by the USDA,
with the backing of A&P and the support of every significant poultry and egg organisation
in the country.
The aim of this contest was to breed a bird chunky enough to feed a whole family – a
chicken with more meat that costs less.
This event led not to just the enhanced birds but a new economy their developers hoped to
create: one where the Chicken of Tomorrow would be the dominant meat in markets.
As a result, it was discovered that by using feed laced with antibiotics, chickens could
grow twice as fast, prompting 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States to be utilized for
animals used as food.
Over the last decades, genetic engineering and technology have produced even bigger chickens,
with even more flesh for meat.
In 2004, a team of geneticists mapped the chicken genome, which provided an opportunity
to study how a millennia of domestication can alter a species.
The researchers’ findings include mutations in a gene designated TBC1D1, which regulates
glucose metabolism, and found that this gene could be manipulated causing chickens to become
unnaturally large.
Another mutation resulting from selective breeding is in the TSHR, the thyroid-stimulating
hormone receptor gene.
In wild animals, this gene coordinates reproduction with day length, confining breeding to specific
seasons.
The mutation disables this gene, and manipulates chickens into breeding and laying eggs all
year long.
Both of these mutations made the chicken even more attractive to meat producers.
Chickens raised for food fall into two categories.
Broiler chickens, who are raised for meat and egg laying chickens.
These chickens have been rendered ill and unfit by genetic manipulation, poor diets,
drugs, and antibiotics, as well as the toxic air and bedding in the sheds where they live.
Excretory ammonia fumes often become so strong that the birds develop a blinding eye disease
called ammonia burn, where afflicted birds rub their hurting eyes with their wings
Modern broiler chickens have skeletons that are significantly bigger than their wild ancestor
with a wide-body shape.
The rapid growth of leg and breast muscle tissue leads to a relative decrease in the
size of other organs such as the heart and lungs, which restricts their function and,
thus, longevity.
They are raised to around 6 weeks old on floors in long, low sheds the size of football fields.
These chickens live in semi-darkness on manure-soaked wood shavings with 30,000 or more birds confined
to a single shed which is often contaminated with poisonous Salmonella and Campylobacter
bacteria.
These bacteria often remain in the bird’s flesh, even when it is cooked, a common cause
of food poisoning.
In the weeks that follow, their weight multiplies many times.
Selective breeding to grow chickens to “market weight” faster has increased at an alarming
pace; by more than 300% over the last 50 years.
Approximately 5 billion egg-laying hens or “layers” are held in battery cages throughout
the world, many of them in production complexes holding a million or more birds.
On average, each caged layer is afforded only 67 square inches of cage space – less space
than a single sheet of letter-sized paper on which to live her entire life.
Today’s hen, selectively bred and artificially induced to yield high egg production, will
produce more than 250 eggs annually, compared to 100 eggs annually a century ago.
51.4 billion chickens are artificially hatched, fattened up, and slaughtered as 45-day-old
babies every year globally whereas the normal lifespan of a chicken is 10 to 15 years.
There isn’t a single federal law in the US that protects chickens from abuse – even
though most Americans say that they would support such a law.
Female chicks are debeaked at a young age, most commonly having a portion of their beaks
seared off with a hot blade.
The purpose is to prevent abnormal feather-pecking that can result from the stress of confinement
in a battery cage.
A chicken’s beak is filled with nerves, and debeaking can result in severe and possibly
chronic pain.
Male chicks in the egg industry do not have it any better.
Since they cannot lay eggs and aren’t used for meat production, they are considered an
unwanted by-product and killed shortly after birth.
In the US, the most common practice is the macerator, which grinds them to death although
carbon dioxide gassing is also used.
At the slaughterhouse, there is no law in place requiring chickens to be rendered unconscious
before slaughter, and the electrified water bath used for stunning has been shown to cause
painful shocks before it stuns the birds.
Ultimately, the birds are hung by their feet and their throats are cut with blades.
But what about “humanely-raised” chickens, you ask?
Cage-free, or free-range, hens are able to walk, spread their wings and lay their eggs
in nests – all vital natural behaviours denied to hens confined in cages.
However, most live in extremely large flocks that can consist of many thousands of hens
who never go outside.
They also typically endure more injuries than caged chickens due to overcrowding and having
no way to establish a natural pecking order.
Hence, cage-free and free-range are in no way better welfare standards for chickens.
The meat and egg industries inflict incredible cruelty on these intelligent and emotional
animals, but you can do something to help.
The best way to prevent chickens from suffering is simply to not eat them or their eggs.
By not supporting these industries you can starting saving lives right now.
If this video has moved you in any way make sure you share it now so it is seen by as
many people as possible.
Lets educate people and save chickens from cruel lives together.
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Would you consider cutting down on meat after seeing this video?
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And finally check out PETA from the link below for more information on how to help all animals
from abuse.