NPR Promotes Cruel Chicken “Wings”: Please Protest!

Ahead Of Super Bowl, Chicken Wing Prices Spike

“The chickens try to hide their head from you by sticking it under the wing of the chicken next to them on the slaughter line. You can tell by them looking at you, they’re scared to death.” – Virgil Butler, former Tyson chicken slaughterhouse worker

Beth Clifton’s collage depicts a contrite Virgil Butler with his partner Laura Alexander, who helped him to see the chickens through her eyes of sorrow and compassion.

Saturday, Feb. 6, NPR’s “All Things Considered” included a segment about “chicken wings” for Super Bowl watchers. A freelance food writer was interviewed by NPR’s Michel Martin about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the cost of chicken wings, and together they joked about how to eat the “wings” and so on.

Near the end of the segment, Martin asked her guest about “wings” for vegetarians/vegans, and the food writer said they’re available but aren’t “proper wings” – mere “faux” wings, don’t you know?

He observed that, of course, “real” chicken “wings” aren’t really wings, since real wings have bones in them. (Unlike vegan wings, however, they’re still “proper” and not “faux.”)

Meanwhile, in 2010, a poultry industry article about “more wings from every chicken” explained that “A new patented cut uses the chicken’s scapula bone and surrounding meat and skin to yield six – not four – wing pieces per bird.”

So not only are the chicken’s wings severed, literally and verbally, from the bird to whom they belong; the “wings” people eat are not even wings.

NPR’s love affair with the chicken industry is inhumane. They need to hear from people who care about these poor birds who are living and dying in hell for the sake of the very diet of carnage and cruelty that spawned the coronavirus pandemic – the connection about which we don’t hear a peep from the corporate media.

Contact NPR to express your concerns:

  NPR: Contact All Things Considered

  NPR: Ask the Public Editor About Ethics

  NPR All Things Considered: Facebook

For more on NPR’s promotion of chicken consumption and heartless humor: