An animal rights group publicized a video Tuesday showing unwanted chicks being tossed alive into a grinder at an Iowa plant and accused egg hatcheries of being “perhaps the cruelest industry” in the world.
The undercover video was shot by Chicago-based Mercy for Animals at a hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, over a two-week period in May and June. The video was first obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
“We have to ask ourselves if these were puppies and kittens being dropped into grinders, would we find that acceptable?” asked Nathan Runkle, the group’s executive director, at a news conference in Des Moines. “I don’t think that most people would.”
The group said that tossing male chicks, which have little value because they can’t lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat, into grinders is common industry practice. United Egg Producers, a trade group for U.S. egg farmers, confirmed that. The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards. “There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens,” Head said. “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need.” Using a grinder, Head said, “is the most instantaneous way to euthanize chicks.”
I suppose we could just wait ’till they’re adults and just lop their little heads off.
Somehow this reminded me of why they slap babies on the ass when they are born, to knock the dicks off the dumb ones.
I don’t know what’s worse, that they are throwing cute, cuddly, adorable little chicks into a shredder, or that I really don’t care.
Pretty unpleasant stuff. Par for the course in the meat and egg processing industry. Many people become vegetarians after visiting these places and I can see why.
What’s not clear is what happens to the ground up chicks. I hope to god they’re not fed to the live ones. They probably end up as ‘chicken’ in McNuggets.
Very costly but if there is no market for them…I know they could give them all to Peta who wouldn’t have a clue what to do with them besides feed them to their meat eating pets.
So that’s how they make Chicken McNuggets.
Deowll, here is your answer.
“PETA’s “Animal Record” report for 2008, filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, shows that the animal rights group killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in its care last year. During all of 2008, PETA found adoptive homes for just seven pets.
Just seven animals — out of the 2,216 it took in. PETA just broke its own record.
Why would an animal rights group secretly kill animals at its headquarters? PETA’s continued silence on the matter makes it hard to say for sure. But from a cost-saving standpoint, PETA’s hypocrisy isn’t difficult to understand: Killing adoptable cats and dogs – and storing the bodies in a walk-in freezer until they can be cremated – requires far less money and effort than caring for the pets until they are adopted.”
http://petakillsanimals.com
So why are they and their like criticizing the Poultry industry when they are worse?
Mmm… yummy!
I don’t like it any more than the rest of you, and maybe we need to try to find a more humane way of killing these male chickens. But the entire meat industry is not for those who are squeamish. Its also something that is needed, at least until we figure out a way to grow the meat without an animal.
I’d rather not buy my meat from the “meat industry”. I’ll find a local farmer who has a cow, find someone who has poultry free-ranged, find someone who humanely treats their animals. Plus, who in the H*LL wants to eat a White Sex-Link tasteless chicken…who’s crammed into a warehouse and fed crap (including antibiotics, because living in an artificially lit, crammed to the gills warehouse is not healthy, duh) until they’re “market sized” (3-5 months) and then whacked and plucked in the most unsanitary of conditions. Yuck.
I’d rather get my nutrition licking the undersides of MacDonald’s plastic resin seating.
The more people stop buying trash food, and supporting humane growers …the sooner this nonsense will end. So, what it is more expensive…then eat less.
And again the answer lies with local agriculture/permaculture.
Anyone here that keeps chickens?
For those that don’t.
They taste A LOT BETTER!!(hope i don’t get fired)
“I don’t like it any more than the rest of you, and maybe we need to try to find a more humane way of killing these male chickens. But the entire meat industry is not for those who are squeamish. Its also something that is needed, at least until we figure out a way to grow the meat without an animal.”
No, theres a very easy, and common sense answer available right now. If you dont like seeing how animals are killed, then refuse to have anything to do with it. Go vegan! Cripes! Its not difficult!
Theres many other Animal RIGHTS groups apart from PETA, I myself dont like the whole “naked” thing. I prefer “creative vegan education”, as in helping to give people who ask for information pamphlets and good websites, not throwing buckets of blood at people who wear leather with hair on it but not people who wear straight leather.
Im glad to see DU cover these sorts of things. Did anyone here who eats animal products NOT know what happened to male chicks? Its pretty awful no? Be glad you are not chickens!
THEY ALL DIE IN THE END. I just wish they could make something tasty out all of them…
Cats and dogs will die in the end too, would you like to make something tasty out of all of them too?
In New Zealand the news has been a spate of animal cruelty cases, namely a Tongan man cooking his pet dog, the SPCA etc cant charge him because he KILLED IT HUMANELY, I dont believe any killing is the “humane” thing to do, especially killing just to eat what you have killed!
Know how he killed his pet dog “humanely”?? With a BONK on the head! I think it were a spade or a cricket bat, something like that. Then he cut its throat and put it in an outside oven, sort of like a traditional BBQ of his culture. People have been outraged over this, baying for his blood, and yet every day they eat chickens, pigs, cows….
The narrator of the video made me laugh out loud. He totally kills any effectiveness that the video might have.
This isn’t an indictment of eating eggs, it’s an indictment of factory farming. If we all got our eggs and meat birds from local farmers, a great number of the males who are now ground up at birth might at least live for the 10-12 weeks it takes for standard breeds to reach meat size. Hybrid breeds reach maturity at 8-10 weeks.
You want eggs? You gotta break some chickens.
Humane? Tossing them in the grinder may not be pretty but it’s almost instantaneous.
As long as we eat animal protein, we’ll need factory farms like this. And me? I suffered through a seven year period as a vegetarian before I came back to the faith. I do enjoy a plate full of scrambled eggs next to my bacon and buttery biscuit.
If this is a humane way of killing shouldn’t we be using it for people on death-row?
“If this is a humane way of killing shouldn’t we be using it for people on death-row?”
Not really the same. We can’t create a grinder large enough to kill a human instantaneously. Well, we *could*, but it’d be ridiculous and expensive. That being said, I wouldn’t necessarily call it “humane”, just instantaneous. (It’s pretty morbid – which is an additional argument as to why we don’t use it on humans. People have the psychological effect of seeing the grinder and rationalizing what its going to do to them – chicks, presumably, do not.)
I honestly think this is waste though. I’m sure someone crunched the numbers, but I just can’t see how it costs them all that much to keep those roosters around to sell for meat a few months down the road.
This is an excellent issue for self assessment. Do I think, or do I emote? Do I focus on the image or the issue?
But as much abuse, mostly deserved, that we heap on our Editors, I wish to give kudos to McCullough for his appropriate tagging of this item: “Recipe Nook.”
I’m embarrassed to say its the first time I noticed the category. Clicking on the link, I see this is a “not to be missed” category. Every entry a winner.
What other gems existing on Dvorak-org-blog escape my slack jaw somnambulism?
We could do this with the old people that the government feels are economically unworthy of further medical care- then they could be composted to help the planet one last time.
@slack-jawed-yokel said “What’s not clear is what happens to the ground up chicks. I hope to god they’re not fed to the live ones. They probably end up as ‘chicken’ in McNuggets.”
They use those ground up male chicks to make dog food and other assorted non-human feed. Fido thanks them.
Alex. Agree with your “grinder” theory. Also would interfere with a lot of religious burial rules. Too bad, in a way. I think lethal injection is just fine except for the lead up (strapping ’em down, starting the infusions, inserting the butt plug – yep! – and catheter, etc. That’s all just torture. Grinder? “Step into this room, please.” The floor opens and in a half a second – dead as a baby rooster.
As for keeping the chicks around until they’re grown? Uhm, that’s 200 MILLION of ’em. That’s a lot of rooster meat wandering around an egg farm. And it’s not like they’re going to waste? Cat food, anyone?
“There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens,” Head said. /// Thats not true. Just be expensive, time consuming to select female gametes or abort the male embryo’s, thats all.
That said, I don’t think “the COST” of raising a male is more than a female==but there is less of a market for roosters/cocks than there is for hens.
I was watching an episode of Julia Childs the other day making coq-au-vin and she was emphatic that the recipe called for an old stopped laying eggs hen. Quite specific those french recipes.
Also, your standard egg is an unfertilized one so this operation was obvious a special run of fertilized eggs to produce the next generation of unfertilized egg layers.
Food===comes in plastic containers.
Poor baby chicks.
Let them grow up, then tie razor blades to their feet and have them fight to the death.
Oh wait, people frown on that too.
This talk in the comments about cats and dogs, etc… When you read the ingredients on your dog or cat food I’d be willing to bet that the “chicken” our pets love so much in their food at least partially comes from this.
Another one is probably chicken hot dogs.
Come on McCullough, we don’t want to know these things. The whole industry is fowl, let us eat in peace.
Too much of these stories and we’ll all eventually end up having to eat “lab grown meat” Google that everyone, pretty disturbing.
Maybe they could send a few hundred of them to The Discovery Channel’s TV show The Colony so that the Zombie Apocalypse survivors could have some protein. Last episode they were trying to catch and eat rats.
Not that much meat on either I guess.
Hey Animby—I was googling about espresso the other day and came across a thread about the health benefits of coffee. One guy was big on espresso enemas. I thought of you for some reason. Then I specifically googled “Why are espresso machines so expensive” and it turned up an espresso forum group in Chang Mai. You aren’t that removed from civilization as I thought.
Let’s see. OH–yea===I sure do love ground up male chicken with my espresso.
Somewhat a predictable response from this mostly male forum.
The sexually insecure that are compelled to express the ‘machismo’ are obliged to respond with “I don’t give a shit”.
Ooooh, how Macho. I bet you have a mustache and a real hairy ass.
If a more ethical treatment for animals can be found, I am all for it.
I don’t eat red meat, and now this video has made me feel bad for eating eggs and poultry. Im definitely going to look into how the “free range” eggs I buy are processed.
Bobbo: Coffee enemas have been popular with the nut crowd for a century or more. There are a couple of spas here in Chiang Mai that specialize in them. They used to be prescribed as a cure for various cancers. They don;t work but they can screw up your electrolytes and kill you. So maybe they do work.
So, why DO espresso machines cost so much? Is it because they get clogged up with baby chicken feathers?
Re: the chicks ground up for pet food theory…do we know this is true? I’m wondering what happens to their down…the fur on the chicks. Seems that the ratio of down to meat is pretty high, and how do they deal with this?
Olo, I apologize for suggesting that. I do not know it’s true but it seems quite logical to me. I suppose that chicken content in the cat food could just as easily come from the offal from a chicken butchery plant. In any case, I bet that protein finds a use in the food chain somewhere. I’d be willing to bet even the egg shells are sued in something.