In May, Yale University convened a unique conference examining “The Chicken: Its Biological, Social, Cultural, and Industrial History From Neolithic Middens to McNuggets.” The raising of chickens for eggs or meat by corporate agribusiness results in terrific cruelty for the birds, threats to public health and factory workers, and the systematic degradation of the environment. The Yale conference explored these consequences and discussed examples of alternative, humane, and sustainable farming methods.

These hens, imprisoned for life in battery cages, can never fulfill their inborn nature as recorded in The Bible: “Even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings.” Matthew 23:37. (United Poultry Concerns)

Like her wild ancestors, today’s domestic chicken is a nestbuilder. When hens were first confined to brutal cages in the 1920s, a small nesting area was built into the cage. In the 1930s, cages for individual hens were introduced - without a nest area. By the 1950s, wire cages with 3-6 birds in each, arranged in tiers, became commonplace. Cruelty became institutionalized in the keeping of hens for commercial egg production. Today, once-common small, outdoor flocks and barns with nest boxes and perches that took biology into account, allowing the birds to build nests, dustbathe, preen, stretch their legs and extend and flap their wings are a rarity. The denial of the birds’ natural behavior and movement has led to decades of suffering from osteoporosis and muscle weakness to bone breakage when hens are removed from cages, transported to slaughter, then cruelly shackled and hung for slaughter.

The Yale conference represents an admirable start toward recognizing the barbaric cruelty and suffering inflicted upon chickens by humans, hopefully with a view toward rectifying this unfathomable misery. For more information about the conference, visit http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/chicken/index.html. 

State legislators in Illinois and Missouri recently had a lesson in American democracy when they introduced legislation that would have taken away an important piece of basic American freedom—the public’s right to know. These legislators had hoped to deny public access to an industry impacting millions of animals and people, but their attempt was quickly quashed.

Earlier this year legislation quietly passed the Illinois and Missouri State Houses that would have made it illegal for anyone, including the press, to photograph or videotape animal factory operations for any reason. The authors of the legislation and its supporters in the state Farm Bureaus convinced other legislators that this bill was crucial to ensure the future of agricultural “research,” but in reality they wanted to deflect public attention from the atrocities being committed on animals and to the fouling of the food supply behind the closed doors of animal factories.

Fortunately what the authors of this bill feared the most is exactly what brought about its demise—public awareness. As soon as the public and the media became aware of the scheme, it failed in the Senate. Instances like this show the importance of keeping the public informed about what is taking place in these animal factories and within our political system. However, much more needs to be done. The public should demand that the doors to these factories be thrown open to expose wanton animal cruelty and the reckless attitude of those playing with America’s food supply.

Although the Federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act was enacted in 1958 to ensure that animals are rendered unconscious prior to slaughter, the enormous increase in line speed demanded by big slaughterhouses means cattle and pigs are often fully conscious when being skinned and cut up. Now, Congress is demanding that the United States Department of Agriculture enforce the law properly. A Resolution was included in the just-passed contentious farm bill calling on the Secretary of Agriculture to track violations of the Humane Slaughter Act “and report the results and relevant trends annually to Congress.” The Amendment was based on S. Con. Res. 45 introduced by Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R–IL) to prevent the torture of animals killed for food.