Chickens do not have the most basic legal protection

All illustrations: Sue Coe.

Chickens are the most abundant birds on Earth and are widely considered to be one of the most mistreated animals on the planet. Despite their ability to think and feel, billions of chickens are raised and slaughtered for food each year and subjected to the worst possible living and slaughtering conditions to meet the growing global demand for meat.

Chickens are complex social and emotional beings. Research indicates that chickens are not the simple-minded creatures that many people assume.

“(S)cientists have learned that the bird can be deceptive and cunning, that…(they have) communication skills comparable to those of some primates, and that…(they use) sophisticated signals to convey…(their) intentions,” according to Scientific American. “When making decisions, the chicken considers…(its) prior experience and knowledge of the situation. …(Chickens) can solve complex problems and empathize with people…(who) are in danger.”

Miserable lives trapped in factory farms

A 2019 Sentience Institute analysis estimated that 99 percent of all birds raised for food spend their lives trapped in factory farms. Broiler chickens — the industry term for birds raised for meat — suffer horrific living conditions every day of their short lives.

Most of these hens are born in industrial hatcheries surrounded by bright lights and machinery. The chicks never meet their mothers—the industry separates the unhatched chicks from their mothers as soon as the eggs are laid. Shortly after hatching, the birds are packed into cramped crates and shipped to factory farms.

Once they arrive at the factory farm, chickens suffer from extreme stress due to overcrowding. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of birds are housed in a single barn. The birds endure filthy living conditions, surrounded by their own feces. These dirty, crowded environments are known to breed and spread zoonotic diseases, such as bird flu, which threaten both humans and chickens.

The meat industry breeds chickens to grow at an unnatural rate to maximize profits. This rapid growth rate often causes them to have painful health problems, including skeletal disorders, skin burns, footpad damage, and heart attacks. These birds are bred to grow so quickly that their legs often lack the strength to support their heavy bodies—some have difficulty even walking or standing. They often experience painful lameness as a result.

Most chickens are sent to slaughter at less than two months of age. Despite their large size, they are still babies when they die.

Chickens are killed in an inhumane way

Factory farm chickens meet a gruesome end to their short and unnatural lives. We can’t be sure if the chickens are conscious of being killed, but we can be sure they feel fear and pain as they are chained upside down and surrounded by the smell of death.

After a stressful journey to the slaughterhouse, trapped in cramped crates, workers remove the birds and chain them upside down by their legs in a process known as live slaughter. During this process — one of the standard methods of slaughtering chickens — many of the birds flap their wings in terror and suffer broken bones and other injuries.

The birds are driven along an automated line and submerged in a pool of electrified water, designed to render them unconscious, but the system often doesn’t work as planned. Evidence shows that the stunning method used by the poultry industry doesn’t always render the birds unconscious. More than half a million chickens drowned in scalding tanks in 2019, according to alarming data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Shortly after stunning, their throats are cut with a sharp blade to allow them to bleed out.

Finally, the chickens’ bodies are immersed in boiling water to loosen the feathers from their skin before a feather-removal machine plucks them completely. If the chicken isn’t stunned or bled dry before being put into the steam tank, it will spend its final moments being boiled alive.

USDA inspectors found serious violations during a 2021 slaughterhouse inspection. They included cooking birds alive that had escaped slaughter during the feathering phase, leaving live birds among the dead, and other horrific abuses.

Profit Motive: Choosing Cruelty Over Care

Scientists have found that water baths with lower electrical frequencies are more effective at stunning birds. However, they can sometimes damage carcasses, making the meat unsaleable.

These types of low-frequency shocks can cause spasms during the stunning process, which can result in broken limbs and ruptured blood vessels, reducing the economic value of the birds to the industry.

Scientists believe that despite these injuries, low-frequency water baths reduce the overall suffering of birds during the slaughter process because they have a better chance of effectively stunning the birds. However, most slaughterhouses still choose less effective stunning methods due to concerns about meat quality.

Because the poultry industry values ​​profit over welfare, countless birds used for their meat suffer gruesome deaths, sometimes while fully conscious. And because poultry is exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act, virtually no regulations ensure humane slaughter of chickens. A 2016 HuffPost article stated, “If just 1 percent of chickens raised in the U.S. each year are not effectively stunned, that means about 90 million animals are suffering violent and painful deaths.”

In Europe, controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) is becoming an increasingly common slaughter method. This approach involves gassing birds to the point of unconsciousness. CAS is considered more humane and much less stressful for the birds because they can be stunned without being tied.

Egg-laying hens are also cruelly killed

Many people do not realize that laying hens ultimately suffer a similar fate. When their egg production declines, they are deemed useless to the industry and sent to slaughter.

Male chicks born in the egg industry suffer one of the darkest fates of any animal used in our modern food system. Once the eggs hatch, workers put the birds on a conveyor belt to be “sexed.” The female chicks are set aside to be sent to egg factories, but the male chicks have no economic use in the industry.

In most hatchery settings, male chicks are thrown into macerators where they are ground up alive.

Consumer awareness and pressure help reduce animal cruelty

Fast-food chains rely on live-slaughter chicken suppliers. McDonald’s, for example, is the world’s second-largest purchaser of chicken. According to a 2021 report by Sentient Media, birds slaughtered for McDonald’s meals continue to be mistreated. The fast-food chain has no minimum requirements for space or natural light, and its slaughter process is inhumane. “While McDonald’s may have attempted to address the growing demand for improved animal welfare, these measures were largely inadequate,” the report found.

In response to consumer pressure and growing awareness, McDonald’s and hundreds of food companies have publicly agreed to adhere to the Better Chicken Commitment, which includes moving away from cruel animal slaughter using chains.

According to the 2023 report, while some leading food companies have made progress in meeting these commitments, others have not been transparent about their progress in achieving “their chicken welfare goals.”

Ensuring humane treatment of chickens

Chickens are intelligent and social animals, capable of nuanced thoughts and feelings. Yet the modern poultry industry treats them as commodities, not sentient beings.

The unnatural growth rate of chickens causes immense pain and discomfort — just to maximize industry profits. The brutal slaughter of each bird means the end of a life of immense suffering. For billions of sentient birds, slaughter is a painful end to a miserable and short life trapped in our broken food system.

Chickens deserve better than this horrible violence. Concerned consumers can call on the poultry industry to end this cruelty and adopt better industry standards to ensure better treatment of these birds.