Chicks Ground Up Alive to Bring You Cheap Eggs

[Karmadillo]

You can see the video by clicking on the link.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/142423/video%3A_chicks_ground_up_alive_to_bring_you_cheap_eggs/

What's an egg hatchery to do with useless male chicks? It grinds them up alive.

The "food units" cascading down the conveyor in the video are sorted like apples; some are fine grade, others, rejects.

In this case, however, the kinetic yellow balls comprising an undulating fuzzy mass are not pears or peppers but newly hatched chicks.

And they're being sorted into categories -- male, female and deformed -- with "male" and "deformed" destined for an especially horrible death.

An undercover video made at the Hy-Line Hatchery in Spencer, Iowa -- the largest hatchery for egg-laying breed chicks in the U.S. -- confirms what has been rumored for years about the egg industry: that newly hatched males, which are worthless to the egg industry, are ground up alive in chopping machines called macerators. The video was released released by Mercy For Animals.

Video taken with a hidden camera clearly shows healthy male chicks, peeping and bouncing as they greet the world, fed alive into the blades of the macerator like so much litter. Hello! Goodbye!

"I saw a bloody slush coming out of the bottom of the grinder," writes the MFA investigator who worked in the Hy-Line "transfer room" and on the cleaning crew during May and June. "The plant manager told me that the ground-up male chicks were used in dog food and fertilizer."

more...

[EndersDame]

1. Raise your Own Chickens! I have seen them in back yards of Urban areas

In the olden days people used to get eggs from their own chickens and food from their own garden!

[izquierdista]

6. Solve the garbage problem too!

Chickens, even male ones, are great at turning garbage into food or fertilizer. They will eat slugs, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, coffee grounds, potato peels, kudzu, vegetable peels, stale bread soaked in yesterday's bacon grease, and whatever your kids won't. If you have a portable coop for them (google "chicken tractor"), they can weed and fertilize your back yard in addition to providing you with eggs.

[here_is_to_hope]

7. I have recently made the jump into being a chicken farmer....

Not only do I get eggs daily but my 6 year old has 8 new friends!

I got all 8 for free, already laying 6 eggs a day.
In the last two weeks, they have become pets, coming when called, lining up to get into the coop at night after free ranging all day.
And the eggs...mmmmm, good.
Best thing I have done this year!
They are fairly easy to keep alive so far, berries, grasses, whatever, they eat it.
We have cats and dogs, they all get along well enough.
I built a chicken tractor for the winter so I can control where they scratch and poop, like all over the garden area I have planned for next year.

[nashville_brook]

11. fresh eggs are NOTHING like store-bought eggs. such a luxury to get 'em fresh!

[Neecy]

17. I buy them fresh over my back fence

The neighbor who lives behind me raises chickens. Whenever I need eggs I pass over an empty egg carton and I receive a dozen gorgeous just-laid eggs for a buck. And I agree, the quality is much, much better although they do need to be washed right before you use them.

[Teaser]

2. It's not even the killing them I mind

I kill animals rather frequently. The world is a giant death factor on its own...but it's the degree of suffering imposed during their disposition that makes it so awful to me.

Seriously, though, this is a waste of resources. Certainly someone, somewhere can find a better use for male chicks than dogfood.

[EndersDame]

4. I always felt bad for the little crawfish that got boiled alive

At the Restaurant I worked at. I really can't think of a worse way go. One of the cooks would kill them before if it was not to busy. For the ones that made escape attempts IO kinda helped them along and threw them out the back and let them take their chance in the river

[zonkers]

5. Here is a short video based on David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOaEk-kPH9k

[Karmadillo]

19. Very sad

nt

[Teaser]

13. it's really easy to kill them quick

or at least make sure they're brain dead. no good reason not too.

[3waygeek]

20. To induce brain death, just let them

watch Faux Noise for an hour or so. Seems to work pretty well on Republicans.

[bumblebee1]

21. We just don't put Republicans in boiling water. n/t

[bread_and_roses]

3. Jesus H. Christ - every day some new horror in our insane world (n/t)

[create.peace]

8. isn't that the truth....i got rid of my tv (no reception either) and no reception on radio, is my

internet next? to preserve my sanity? it would save me 50bucks a month with which i could pay my water/sewer/garbage bill nearly!

[rucky]

9. The things that people do for profits.

Does anybody have an honest and moral way to make money anymore?

[Stinky The Clown]

10. What's the alternative?

No. I am NOT defending this.

And I'm not sure there is no value in male chicks. That said, and assuming they are, in fact, worthless, what is the alternative to dispose of them? Yes, they're animals. But they're also just part of the food chain. How else to do what needs to be done?

Maybe the answer is to go to the source. Using some form of artificial insemination, breed nothing but female chicks, no?

[izquierdista]

15. Raise them for meat

How many poor people around the world can't afford to buy male chicks to raise for meat? Lots. The saying "a chicken in every pot" was meant to indicate prosperous times, when peasants had meat to eat for Sunday dinner. You can bet if there was a deduction or charitable write-off for giving the chicks to the poor, the egg factory accountants would take it. But there isn't, so poor people go hungry while chicks are killed.

The perversion that is American agriculture has all meat animals raised on a diet of corn and soybeans, and sometimes the thin margin of profit doesn't leave any room for the expense of shipping male chicks somewhere where they can be raised to slaughter weight (around 6-9 months). That's not to say that a poor family with no corn and soybeans, but plenty of garbage, insects and kudzu couldn't raise some chicks for next to nothing and have a lot of nice Sunday dinners.

What's the solution? Get the egg factories to give the chicks to Heifer International, where they will have value: http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.2667525/?msource=kw4746

[Deja Q]

18. Agreed, but the narrator stated "...it's unprofitable..."

What doesn't give profit a good name these days... Bill Gates should patent that too.

[aikoaiko]

12. Mother Hen, don't let your chicks grow up to be roosters....

Since this is the third or fourth thread on this and felt like making a joke.


The chick grinder is gruesome, but it is a relatively quick death compared to the chicks that fall through the cracks or go threw the washer.

[Deja Q]

16. "Mother Hen, don't let your chicks grow up to be cocks...."

:yoiks:

[BlooInBloo]

14. Certainly sounds disgusting, but I'm not really bothered by this...

Unless there's a food-safety issue or if there's something more cost-effective that could be done with the animals.