A massive blaze killed tens of thousands of chickens at an egg farm in Illinois on Tuesday.
Consuming two chicken sheds at Mussman’s Back Acres Egg Farm, the five-alarm fire had Grant Park firefighters and 35 neighboring fire departments battling the flames for about nine hours, using 750,000 gallons of water.
The sheds were each the length of two football fields and crammed with chickens. They all died in the fire.
Unfortunately, this is not the only barn fire that killed chickens this week. Also on Tuesday, roughly 600 chickens died when a chicken coop and large storage barn caught fire at Little River Farm in Connecticut. And on Friday, a fire broke out at Trillium Farms in Ohio, killing an unknown number of egg-laying hens locked in metal battery cages.
Earlier this year an overnight barn fire at Van Boekel Farms in Ontario killed more than 3,000 pigs, and just one month later 5,000 pigs burned alive in another barn fire in Ohio. In Nova Scotia this past October, about 30,000 chicks died in “a very fast, aggressive fire” that caused the barn to collapse.
Fires at factory farms are more common than one would think. Farm and Food Care Ontario, a farming industry group, stated that “corroded electrical components, exacerbated by the gases produced by livestock” was the leading cause of barn fires.
In short, methane and ammonia released by the thousands of animals kept in cramped, filthy conditions at factory farms can turn barns into ticking time bombs.
Numerous efforts to force factory farmers to install sprinklers to protect animals have failed, because the industry claims these measures would be too costly. Clearly, the industry cares only about profits, even though barn fires have been identified as “one of the most important animal welfare issues impacting farmers and the public’s perception of farming.”
Ontario averages 71 barn fires involving animals a year, according to data from Ontario’s fire marshal. The United States averages more than 1,200 barn fires each year, causing countless fatalities.
Whether killed in a barn fire or in a slaughterhouse, farmed animals are subjected to unspeakable cruelties: extreme confinement, brutal mutilations, and violent deaths.
You have more power than you think. We can all withdraw our support from an industry that puts profits over lives by ditching meat, dairy, and eggs.
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