If you think a chicken dinner is an excellent alternative to mad beef, you may want to think again.
Eating animals makes you fat and unhealthy. Perhaps the only way to ensure that a chicken dinner
won't poison your family is to throw it away. =A0 About 90 percent of all chickens sold are
contaminated with salmonella bacteria or campylobacter. One out of three supermarket birds is
contaminated with salmonella. Recent statistics show that every year 6.5 million people get sick and
more than 6,000 people die from eating contaminated meat.
Chicken is higher than red meat in heterocyclic amines, the compounds shown to raise cancer risk. A
3.5 ounce serving of beef and a 3.5 ounce serving of white chicken meat have the same amount of
cholesterol: 85 milligrams. Chicken has as much fat (anywhere from 20% to 70% fat depending on the
cut and whether or not it has skin) and cholesterol as beef.
From Shell to Hell: Chickens are the most abused animals on the face of the Earth.
Chickens may not be as cuddly as beagles, but they suffer just as much.
Chickens raised for food are genetically bred to grow so large so fast that their legs cannot
withstand their weight.
Countless birds slowly starve to death within inches of food when they become crippled and are
unable to move.
Chickens are crammed into crowded sheds with tens of thousands of other birds where disease,
smothering and heart attacks are common. After a hellish ride crammed into small crates, oftentimes
in weather extremes, they are hung upside down and their throats are cut, often while they are fully
conscious.
Millions of male chicks--because they don't lay eggs and are not profitable meat chickens--are
tossed into garbage tubs or large plastic bags to be crushed or suffocated. Others are dumped into
augers that grind up and mutilate the baby birds before tossing them into waiting fertilizer trucks.
Dying and mutilated chicks are dumped onto neighboring fields with manure spreaders. Writes one
eyewitness: "A horrible peeping came from the pile."
The egg industry, in its tireless quest to automate production techniques, has used industrial
strength garbage disposals to mash unwanted chicks. According to an eyewitness research scientist:
"Even after 20 seconds, there were only partly damaged animals with whole skulls" in the disposal.
The same hatcheries that provide chicks for factory farms provide chicks for "free-range" egg farms.
Each year 8 billion chickens are slaughtered to feed America's meat addiction and millions more die
from heat exhaustion, disease, freezing, or accidents during transport.
Within 24 hours a chick within an egg develops a tiny, beating heart. Left to its mother, it would
join its siblings from day one in an inquisitive search for food. In the eyes of the poultry
industry this baby is one of two things: a commodity or garbage.
Birds are not machines in the assembly line. They are creatures who can feel pain and fear. There is
no fundamental difference between the chickens and turkeys you eat and the birds you feed in your
own backyard.
"...The cruelty, greed, suffering, madness, Holocaust-like conditions, impoverishment of culture
after culture; the unheralded massacre of tens of billions of precious souls each year, and for
what? A few seconds of pleasure in one of the five nerve endings of the human tongue, a guilt-free
anatomical anomaly that should have been excised by evolution 3 million years ago. And hence, I
would hasten to add that anyone who claims to be an environmentalist--and yet consumes animal products--
is pitiful."--Michael Tobias, author, television producer, humanitarian
We urge people to take individual responsibility by refusing to buy chicken.