Chickens The only creatures you eat before they are born, and after they are dead! Author: Unknown

Image left: Battery hens with hardly enough room to spread their wings.

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The 20th Century saw the invention of intensive poultry farming in America, UK farmers then copied this and denied poultry “a measure of freedom” by taking them from the farm yard and imprisoning them in mind warping cages and high densities, this then became animal abuse and a clear moral crime to anyone with consideration for the welfare of animals.

Hens

These are bred to lay an unnatural 300 eggs per year under hideously cruel conditions, stress due to overcrowding often causes "point of lay hens" to cannibalise others, and no wonder when their world is to be a battery cage the size of an A4 sheet of paper, after a year of hellish misery they become exhausted and unprofitable, so they are then slaughtered and made into chicken soup.

Table birds (broilers) 

These are allowed only a pitiful lifespan of only 6 – 8 weeks of life; they are often castrated surgically, fitted with hormone implants or injected with oestrogen. They are also de-beaked and de-natured and then crammed inside a foul-smelling windowless shed of 30-40,000. These are specifically bred to be lethargic, this reduces their desire to move around too much so that they will quickly gain an unnaturally high body weight, sometimes though the weight is so much that they become crippled and hardly able to stand. The cramped conditions cause further suffering by way of painful ulceration, arthritis, blistering of the feet and also hock burns due to having to stand continually on their own highly acidic faecal mattet (poo).
 
                                              "Hock burn could be identified in 82% of chickens sold in supermarkets."
                                                                        University of Cambridge Research 

Every day in the UK 2.5 million are put to death, that totalls to around 850 million chickens a year which are cruelly treated and slaughtered without necessity, often consumers are kept uninformed as to the hellish conditions that these are reared under.

A great concern lately is that the beef protein which in many instances was impregnated into the chicken meat to enable greater water absorption may be a potential source of the transmission of BSE and the CJD prion which can affect humans, other animal proteins impregnated into Chicken are those from pig bi-products, this has caused serious concern for many Muslim and Jewish consumers because according to their Holy Koran and Hebrew Talmud pig products are expressly forbidden, to eat these products is a violation of what they consider divine requirements. 


 Foi Gras ( French for “fat liver” )

Osteoprosis

This is a disease largely linked to humans and it is highly unusual for it to occur in wild poultry, however since the invention of the battery cages and high densisty houses it has been noted that there is a significant rise in the incidence of this disease occurring in birds unable to get enough natural exercise that keep it at bay.

Image left: Hens scratching in the dust, with room to excersise.

Osteoporosis is a disease where bone density degenerates and is induced by artificial conditions to the point where the birds legs fracture very easily causing excruciating pain, suffering, and death, this is yet another example where humans bring painful diseases upon innocent birds in this case simply by denying them sufficient exercise.

These high density rearing systems are a totally unnecessary affliction of pain and suffering " and why" just to make the industry financially viable.

Bird Flu ( Avian Flu )

This disease is perhaps viewed as the greatest potential threat to human existence next to global warming and has recently sent shock waves all around the globe. There are estimated to be nine kinds of avian flu recognized, the most virulently dangerous kind is classified as H5N1, and which can infect humans. The greatest worry to health authorities is not the virus in its present form, which is only slightly communicable to humans, but the very real possibility that the virus could mutate with a form of human flu giving birth to an organism that is potential lethal to the human masses.

Image left: Chick being tested for deadly avian flu virus.

Fears are rising of the possibility of mutation of the disease and health bodies are determined to eradicate it. In the UK a policy of containing the disease and is implemented by an immediate mass culling regime, this has worked to some extent and thankfully it is making the intensive poultry industry (“which is basically a form of legalized animal abuse” ) not as financially attractive as in recent decades, this and not the realisation of the wrongs that we do to birds by confining them may eventually bring about the end of high density rearing.

There are fears that if H5N1 Avian flu did mutate with the human form it could give rise to a disease that could possibly wipe out the human race. In the 1918/19 pandemic a sub-strain of the flu virus H1N1 ( named Spanish Flu ) killed around 25,000,000 some estimates record that it eventually took the lives of around 50-100 million people worldwide. Wikipeadia states that H1N1 possibly killed 1,000,000 a week in the first 25 weeks. These days with humans living in greater density the death toll could be catastrophically higher, this is the kind of pandemic that government health agencies are determined to avert.