A recent article in The Huffington Post shatters the myth that eating chicken is healthy.
On modern farms, chickens raised and killed for meat have been bred to grow “so big so fast they often become immobilized under their own weight and endure debilitating pain. They also suffer heart attacks, organ failure, and other problems as a result of rapid growth.
Breeding chickens for unnatural growth is not only cruel to the chickens but also decreases the nutritional value of the meat.
A study published in World’s Poultry Science Journal states:
The ever-increasing genetic pressure to improve growth rates and breast
yields of broiler chickens has led to a high incidence of several abnormalities
in breast muscles.
In 2012, another study showed 55.8 percent of broiler chickens had been impacted by muscular myopathies called white striping. By 2016, that number had skyrocketed to more than 96 percent. White striping causes severe product quality and nutritional problems, such as fatty muscle meat. In fact, chicken sold today has 224 percent more fat and 9 percent less protein. Additionally, pound for pound, chicken has about the same amount of cholesterol as red meat.
Chickens comprise 95 percent of animals raised and killed for food in the U.S. and lead some of the most miserable lives of all farmed animals. What’s more, no federal law protects animals during their lives on factory farms. In fact, the law that’s supposed to protect animals at the slaughterhouse, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, doesn’t extend to birds, leaving chickens with virtually no protection from abuse.
Undercover video taken by Mercy For Animals at a Perdue factory farm in North Carolina revealed chickens violently kicked, thrown against walls, and stomped to death by sadistic workers.
Watch.
Luckily, with amazing new products hitting store shelves all the time, replacing chicken with healthy and humane plant-based alternatives has never been easier!
Click here for a list of mouthwatering chicken substitutes.
