United Poultry Concerns - [link removed]
14 April 2020

How Can We Help Chickens and Other Farmed Animals?

By Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns


The following points were made in an Interview I did this month with a student
at the University of Minnesota for her research project on factory farms. Her
questions are implicit in my answers. - Karen Davis

1. There are many ways to make the public aware of the suffering and abuse
taking place inside factory farms. The internet has a lot of undercover
investigative footage including on Facebook sites and organizational
websites. See, for example, Videos & Presentations. At the University of
California in Berkeley, we periodically set up Pay-Per-View video stations
where we pay each student one dollar to view scenes of animal suffering and
abuse on the farms and in the slaughterhouses: chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows,
ducks and others, as well as fish. We also leaflet our brochures to people on
the street and take advantage of opportunities to start or expand a
conversation about how animals live and die in these terrible places.


2. The impression that chickens, turkeys and other "poultry" are not intelligent
enough to deserve respect is mistaken. Not only is there plenty of anecdotal
evidence to the contrary, including from sanctuaries such as ours in
Virginia, and Chicken Run Rescue in Minnesota; modern cognitive animal
science shows that these birds are as intelligent and sensitive as other
animals, including mammals.

Animal scientist Lesley J. Rogers, in The Development of Brain and Behaviour
in the Chicken, provides detailed documentation of the cognitive complexity
of chickens. My own books, including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs; More
Than a Meal: the Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; and For the
Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation, contain well-documented information
about the intelligence and emotional repertoire of chickens, turkeys, ducks
and other "poultry." See our webpage Thinking Like a Chicken for the many
articles we've posted on intelligence and emotional complexity in these
birds.

I will also point out that, ethically, the degree of intelligence, to the
extent it can be determined, should not be a factor in how we treat any
creature of any species. All creatures have sensitivity to what they need and
to what is happening to them, for better or worse. There are plenty of human
beings who are not very intelligent, but that is no reason to mistreat them.


3. Ag-Gag legislation has not significantly affected United Poultry Concerns
except insofar as the legislation has prevented undercover information from
being obtained that might otherwise have been available. We do not normally
conduct these types of investigations, although we have openly visited
several farms and a Tyson chicken slaughterhouse and gotten a great deal of
information from these visits. One thing we've learned from our own and other
investigations of "cage-free" operations and the like is how fraudulent the
claims of "humane" treatment typically are. See, for example, Free Range.


4. Factory farming provides enormous quantities of animal products and plant
produce cheaply. The only way billions of people can have endless quantities
of animal flesh, mammary products (dairy), and eggs is to raise the animals
in vast numbers, in squalid confinement facilities. Prices can be kept low
only if the scale of production is huge, so from that standpoint, factory
farming is an integral part of the U.S. and global economy, the same as mass
production of clothes, cosmetics and other retail items.

However, the economy does not need animal factory farms because people do not
need to eat animal products in order to be healthy. Human health and
environmental health benefit from a nutritious plant-based diet and vegan
economy. If people stopped consuming animal products, the economy would
simply shift to providing all the plant-based products people would be
consuming instead. Indeed, we are seeing a rapid growth of animal-free, vegan
foods in the marketplace. Just because people stop eating animal products
doesn't mean we stop eating!


5. In my view, all forms of animal farming are factory farming, since animals
raised and killed for human food are viewed and treated as commodities rather
than as individuals in their own right. If, for example, they aren't growing
fast or big enough, or producing enough milk or eggs, the farmer kills them
or sends them off to the slaughterhouse. The animals are completely under the
control of their owner - the farmer or corporation, which is the essence of
all forms of slavery and commodification.

While we should do what we can to alleviate the worst cruelties inherent in
animal farming, we need to understand that little can actually be done to
reform this type of enterprise. The billions of chickens and other animals,
including aquatic animals. are simply too vast, and animal farming is a
global operation with no real oversight or government interest in oversight.
In the capitalist farming economy, the animals are objects who exist only to
make money and be consumed. The only true solution is to wean people from
animal products and grow the vegan economy. See: Life Can Be Beautiful.



For more information, please see:

- Assuming Chickens Suffer Less than Pigs is Idle Speciesism
[link removed]

- Turkeys: Sympathy, Sensibility, and Sentience.
[link removed]

- Chickens are Courageous Birds. They are NOT Cowards, or a Trope for Human Cowardice
[link removed]


KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a
nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment
of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Inducted into
the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding Contributions to Animal
Liberation, Karen is the author of numerous books, essays, articles and
campaigns. Her latest book is For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation:
Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl (Lantern Books, 2019).

--
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Don't just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.
[link removed] [link removed]
[link removed]

View this article online
[link removed]

Forward email
[link removed]





This email was sent to [email protected] by [email protected].

Update Profile/Email Address
[link removed]


Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM)
[link removed]


Privacy Policy:
[link removed]





Online Marketing by
Constant Contact(R)
www.constantcontact.com



United Poultry Concerns | PO Box 150 | Machipongo | VA | 23405