dogs and chickens

A few years ago when he was caught for illegal dog fighting, the world turned on Michael Vick.  He left football and went to jail.  For most people it unearthed underground dog fighting that happens everywhere in the United States.  It also reinforced the fact that 99.9% of people think that dog fighting is wrong. 

In the United States, cock fighting is also illegal.  Much like dog fighting it is inhumane and cruel to the animal.  Like dog fighting, 99.9% of people find it wrong.  However, that’s not the only inhumane thing that happens to chickens everyday and almost all of us do nothing about it.

Most Americans, every time they eat chicken, don’t know how the chicken was raised, fed, and treated from birth until mealtime.  The chickens can be injected with different hormones and fed food that fattens them rather than food that is healthy.  The chickens are kept in confined dark places with no opportunity to walk.  Many of the birds are even unable to walk.  After the chickens are finally ready to be processed and slaughtered they are transported, again in confined spaces, crammed into a semi by the hundreds. 

It’s a quick overview of the inhumane manner in which chickens are raised to be eaten.  The chickens are not raised as chickens, but are processed more like a bag of Doritos on the grocery store shelf.  Why, as a people, do we find cock fighting immoral and illegal  – where only a small number of chickens die each year - but find it okay to treat thousands of chickens each year inhumanly through the way they are raised?

It is not a question of finding cock fighting as something that is good, because it is not.  It is a question of this: why are we sitting around and letting our chickens be treated so inhumanly without considering it to be immoral?

For more information on the treatment of chickens and other animals I recommend Fast Food Nation and Food Inc (book & movie).