A disturbing new piece from the front page of “The Washington Post” exposes a very grim reality for chickens and turkeys at today’s slaughterhouses: about one million a year are boiled alive.
At slaughter plants, chickens and turkeys are killed by having their throats slit, and are then moved down the processing line to a scalding tank where they are defeathered.
Because the killing line moves so quickly, many birds are improperly shackled and miss the blade entirely, leaving them fully conscious when dumped into the boiling water. One can’t even fathom the suffering these birds must endure while being boiled alive.
Now the USDA is considering placing even more birds at risk by adopting a new program that would increase the speed of processing lines. Already in the pilot stage, this program has many experts worried about the welfare of the birds. “One of the greatest risks for inhumane treatment is line speed. You can’t always stop the abuse at these speeds,” said Mohan Raj, a Britain-based poultry slaughter expert and advisor to the European Food Safety Authority.
Long before slaughter, animals on today’s factory farms are treated like mere production machines with little to no regard for their suffering. For the over eight billion birds killed each year in the U.S., there is not a single federal law on the books to protect them.
If you don’t want to contribute to such blatant animal abuse, consider adopting a cruelty-free vegan diet. Check out ChooseVeg.com for tips and recipes.