No, this isn’t an expose on the sordid lives of the Teaze-Hers dancers, this is (horribly) serious…
It appears I have been extraordinarily naive about the hidden cost of my poached-eggs-on-toast for brekkie. You see I was not aware, and I bet a lot of you weren’t either, that it is common practice to slaughter all of the day old male chicks, as they (being singularly incapable of laying eggs) are considered “economically worthless”! I was alerted to this horrific practice by an article on Simply Green that documented how an unscrupulous hen breeder had been disposing of their male chicks by tossing them into a concrete dam and leaving them to die from starvation and exposure. To whit;
“This was all started by a report in Beeld telling of the disgusting and heart breaking way 1 day old male chicks that are reportadly “economically worthless” are treated, up to 70 000 male birds are dumped in an empty farm dam every week and left to die.
According to a former employee, Kobus van Zyl, this has been going on for the past 70 years, as long as the North West chicken farm has existed. Van Zyl said sometimes it would take up to five days for the chicks to die, mainly of starvation or suffocation.”
Now, that is properly bleak stuff, and I don’t know about you, but nothing I eat tastes so phenomonally fabulous as to be worth that kind of suffering. However, what really, really upsets me, is that when I started reading up on this story, I discovered that the uproar is not about the fact that the chicks were killed, but simply how they were killed. So let me get this straight, it’s not the fact that 23 million (yup, you read that right) day old chicks are killed EVERY YEAR, because they can’t lay eggs, it’s just the fact that these chicks were left to die outside, rather than being gassed to death. So gas good, exposure/starvation bad… I’m sorry, maybe I am being ridiculously naive but that seems properly screwed up to me… and, for some weird reason, it kinda really puts me off my scrambles. Yuck!
Jeanette on September 6, 2009
Oh no!! I didn’t realise that either when I read the story.
Hanlie on September 9, 2009
I know! This is disgusting. In America they send the day old male chicks through a wood chipper. That is considered humane!
I follow a largely plant-based, whole food diet for health reasons, but lately I am becoming more and more interested in the ethics of farming with animals.
Nice blog!
Kanga on September 10, 2009
Thanks Hanlie
Yup, I’m absolutely revolted by this – I just hope that if enough people become aware of it, we can create enough of an outcry to try and change the industry… it’s just too barbaric to be allowed to continue!
the grisly fate of male chicks – part 2 | figs & vetkoek on September 15, 2009
[...] is disgusting! As you may know if you read part 1 of the grisly fate of male chicks, Boskop Layer Chickens (BLC), who are apparantly one of the biggest chicken farms in the country, [...]