If anyone mentions ‘chicken’ what’s the first image that pops up in your head? Well, most people think of dishes made with the flesh of these baby birds. Rarely do we think of the actual living sentient, being that the poultry industry raised in confinement and sold to butchers to kill. It’s heartbreaking how these chickens are treated so differently from pet dogs or cats though these chickens are truly just as intelligent and sentient. Yes, they are.
Chicken Sentience
Maybe you can’t train a chicken to play fetch with you just like you wouldn’t a cat, but these birds can solve problems and learn from their environment and experiences. Check out this amazing video and this one about a rescued chicken called Sunshine at Edgar’s Mission. Chickens and hens communicate with one another through a variety of vocalizations and body language. They also recognize and remember individual members of their flock as well as humans. Plus, they can dream… just like humans and other mammals! And even though researchers lack certainty regarding the content of chickens’ dreams, it’s plausible that their dreams may involve recollections of past experiences and the emotions tied to those events. So, if chickens have undergone certain experiences, great trauma, like the horrors seen on poultry farms, that could result in nightmares instead of pleasant dreams. It’s just like what we humans experience too.
Why Do We Mistreat Chickens?
So, the burning question arises, “Why do we mistreat chickens so horribly?” The answer is that centuries ago, some evil minds thought about how they could profit from ‘domesticating’ or in other words imprisoning and breeding wild fowl. And slowly society normalized the carnistic ideology that these babies are ‘food’. Sadly, it has become such an integral part of our lives drilled into us through cunning overt and covert marketing and our educational system that we don’t even think about questioning it.
Industrial Names for Chickens
There are two kinds of chickens that chicken exploiting industries raise in order to make monetary profit. One is for their flesh who they have named ‘broilers’, and the other for their eggs they have named ‘layers’. Here we take a look at the lives of chickens exploited for their flesh, namely ‘broilers’.
Broilers
India is one of the countries that kills the greatest number of baby chickens in the world for their flesh. The flesh of these birds is almost always more expensive than plant-based protein rich pulses and it is possible only for people with higher incomes to buy the flesh of chickens. As more and more people in India have started earning more and the number of people in urban areas has also grown, there has been a drastic increase in the number of birds that farmers who run poultries sell to butchers. In 2022, we killed 3,016,758,000 young chickens for their flesh. In 2023, Indians ate more than 4,000,000,000 kgs (forty lakh metric tonnes) of the flesh of these babies. Indian companies also sold more than 7,000,000 tonnes of this baby flesh to other countries in 2018. This is an absolute disaster because we consider India the land of ahimsa.
Genetic Science Exploitation
Let us take a look at how scientists have exploited science. In 1960, baby chickens we killed to eat weighed only around 600 gms when they were six weeks old. Today, ‘scientists’ have created breeds that weigh around 2.5 to 2.7 kgs at that same age. How did this happen? ‘Scientists’ have carried out cruel experiments and bred these chickens specifically to gain weight rapidly. Did you know that the ‘chickens’ you buy are actually just 30-40 days old when butchers kill them even though they look like adult hens?
Industrial Structure of Broiler Breeder Companies
There are two aspects to this industry in India. One is the Broiler Parent Breeder Factory Farm, and the other is the Broiler Chicken Raising Factory Farm. But there is an international pyramid structure to this and the three companies at the top that control the actual genetic selection in the entire world are, not surprisingly, worth trillions of dollars. These international companies do not share this genetic information or science with the local Indian companies so that they can continue to control their monopoly in the world market.
There are three major international Primary Broiler Breeder companies in the world that are at the top of this inhumane industrial pyramid and who generally operate by collaborating with a local company in various countries. These companies exploit genetic science to create birds that have an abnormally high weight simply for making a higher profit when the young chicks are sold. Venkateshwara Hatcheries Pvt. Ltd. or Venky’s in India has collaborated with one of these three companies to become a Primary Broiler Breeder company in India. Next in line are Grand Parent Broiler Breeding companies like Suguna and Parent Breeder Hatcheries like Chaudhary Hatcheries and Gaurav Hatcheries. All of these companies are involved in broiler chicken and egg layer hen breeding. All these breeding companies artificially inseminate (a fine sounding term for rape) chickens to lay eggs which are then hatched artificially in incubators and the chicks never get to meet or know their mothers. The Broiler Breeding Farms, which is the last rung in the cruel ladder, transport day-old chicks to farmers to raise as “food”. Some of these companies use contract farming where they provide small day-old chickens to farmers who grow them until they are a month old and sell them back to these companies. Thus, farmers are also exploited in this system with many running into debt.
Poultry Farms
Chickens in poultry farms never get to meet their mothers because they are born in hatcheries in artificial conditions in chicken breeding companies like the ones mentioned above. Baby chicks endure immense suffering at the hands of humans in poultry farms till their lives are taken at just 35-45 days old. Chickens, like babies of all species, have psychological needs and as they grow have social needs. When chickens grow into adults, they love to spend time dust bathing, preening, leg and wing stretching, wing flapping, and tail wagging. Chickens in poultry farms never get to experience these as farmers keep them in barren sheds with cement floors in large numbers and they are sold to butchers when they are still babies. That is the reason they are called chickens… because they are exactly that… little baby chickens.
Confinement And Unnatural High Protein Feed
Farmers keep the young chickens in a confined space with a cement floor with equipment for food and water. This is of course unnatural because chickens are used to foraging for food in the soil. These chickens like mentioned earlier are genetically selected to grow very fast in weight as compared to normal chickens. Many chickens suffer from lameness or leg fractures because their legs are not strong enough to hold up the excessive weight and they cannot reach food and water and die of starvation. The obesity also causes heart failure in many. Apart from that, since they are confined in cramped spaces, they are forced to survive on a bed of their own feces. The smell of ammonia from the feces is extremely painful for their lungs, which are already taxed because of the excessive weight. The strong smell causes breathing difficulties, lung problems as well as skin lesions. Imagine imprisoning a six-year-old human child who abnormally weighs around 60 or 70 kgs in a small room with just food and water and forcing him to live in his own urine and stools. That’s how cruel poultry farming is. Most chickens ordinarily forage for insects and feast on plants, fruits, seeds and berries in soil in a natural environment. In fact, they are very fond of berries, and if they are lucky enough to come across a low-lying berry bush, they will raid it for fruit. These are foods that are both delicious and easy for the chickens to digest. But poultry farmers give these chickens feed made of soya and corn laced with antibiotics to make them grow unnaturally fast. This feed is heavy and difficult for the chickens to digest and definitely not something they would choose to eat themselves. Did you know that farmers have to feed around 1 kg grain to each chick in the first 21 days, another 2 kgs in the next 14 days and yet another 1 kgs in the next week? That’s around 4 kgs of grain for each bird. This is an extremely unsustainable ‘food’ system. The same 4 kgs of grain could feed at least 20 people directly. Moreover, farmers also admit that 5 to 10% of these chickens die before they can sell them off.
Transport and Slaughter
When they are just over 30 days old, the farmer packs them into lorries and the transporter takes them to various chicken butcher shops. The transporter makes no effort in keeping them safe whether there is heavy rain, extreme heat or severe cold. They often suffer from broken wings and legs because of the rough handling, and many die before they even reach their final destination. (You will be able to see these dead chickens in the lorries if you take the trouble to go closer). When the transporter reaches the butcher shop, he usually weighs ten to twelve birds together held upside down on a hanging weighing scale even though it is illegal in India to do so. This is extremely painful for the chickens because all their excessive weight is held on just one leg. Very often, the butcher keeps these chickens without any food or water in rusted and poorly maintained wire cages called “khokhas”. You must have noticed that these chickens are always sitting down on the metal wire mesh floor of the cages. That’s because they just cannot bear their unnatural weight. These babies are crammed together so tightly they have no space to move around at all. Very often they try to climb on top of one another to relieve the pain of the cage wires. When a customer comes to the slaughterhouse, the butcher pulls out the baby roughly and you will hear the bird screaming in pain and fear. However, we all ignore their cries, or the butcher simply silences these cries by slitting her throat and throwing her into a dirty blood-soaked drum to die a painful death that takes up to a few minutes. Very often this happens while the other birds watch in terror, and we can only imagine the fear and stress they go through knowing their fate. Not all birds get sold immediately and some chickens may spend months in these miserable conditions before the butcher finally kills them.
What We Should Know About Chickens
Chickens are not only the most populous bird on the planet; they are also among the most abused. This can be traumatising to know because chickens in fact are inquisitive and interesting birds who are in some cases smarter and more intelligent than small children. Moreover, their cognitive abilities are like that of cats, dogs and also some primates. When chickens are in their natural surroundings, they form friendships and social hierarchies, recognise one another, develop pecking orders, love and take care of their young like all mothers, and enjoy a full life that includes dustbathing, making nests and roosting in trees. Many people find chickens to be amusing and entertaining birds to watch. For example, chickens may engage in playful behaviors such as pecking at objects or chasing after insects, may approach humans in a curious or friendly manner, or they may try to peck at or investigate objects that humans are holding or using or they may just strut around in a playful or exaggerated manner.
Like all animals, chickens love their families and value their own lives, but we humans have learnt to value them only as units of production rather than living sentient birds. They’re naturally social creatures and are always making sure their families and other chickens in their group are safe. Many people, especially in sanctuaries, spend time with them and show us that they have complex social structures and communicate with us and each other just like humans do. They can do complex mental tasks, learn by watching one another and can exercise self-control when needed. They are also capable of worrying about the future and know that objects still exist even if you hide them from view just like our cats and dogs or most little children know it. They feel emotions, including fear, stress, pain, and pleasure. They can become agitated or distressed when they are exposed to loud noises, unfamiliar environments, or other sources of stress. So, put yourself in their position to imagine what they must be feeling being transported and kept in cages on the streets only to be pulled out roughly and killed brutally.
What Can We Do?
Chickens have all these wonderful qualities and emotions, and yet we choose to treat these birds as objects that can be sold for monetary profit. Farmers, employees and butchers in this business have to suppress their feelings of compassion and shut down their conscience in order to do the terrible things they do to these chickens. So, we not only take the lives of these birds by paying someone else to do the dirty work, but we also create monsters out of the people involved in this violent “food” system. If we want peace in this world, we must regain our power to stand up against these social structures. The first step is to choose not to be a part of this system by eating only plant-based food instead. It’s easy to do so in India with our traditional dishes like roti, sabji, dal chawal, papad, chutney, aachaar, and salad vegetables. The next step is to speak up against the cruel system to awaken both consumers as well as those directly involved in the poultry sector. At Ahimsa Land Foundation, we want to ensure chickens live a healthy, happy and natural life. A life that they deserve. If that’s something you would stand up for too, give us a hand by joining us to help us achieve a safer world for our birds.