5 hacks for reducing your intake of animal products
Reducing your intake of meat is one way of protecting our environment and the welfare of livestock animals – but what if you wanted to take it one step further and reduce your intake…
The treatment of meat chickens is one of the biggest animal welfare problems in Australia today. Most meat chickens lead short and miserable lives of chronic pain and suffering.
More than 700 million meat chickens are raised and slaughtered in Australia each year, and most of them are bred to grow so large and so quickly, they struggle to walk. The result? Deformed bones, painful fractures, skin burns from lying in waste, and heart conditions.
Meat chickens are a completely different breed of chicken to the hens that lay eggs. To produce cheap chicken meat, these birds (broilers) have been genetically selected to grow too big and too fast for their own bodies to handle. In fact, they gain weight so fast their bones are not strong enough to support them. This means they can be ready to go for slaughter at just 5 weeks of age (35 days).
Modern chicken farming involves tens of thousands of birds being packed into sheds at high densities. They never experience natural light or clean air, or have enough room to scratch around or dust bathe, or perch. That’s the real cost of cheap chicken.
In less than a century, the chicken industry has created chickens which grow twice as big in half the time which is standard practice here—all commercially produced chicken meat in Australia comes from fast-growing chickens. But it doesn’t have to be.
It’s crucial for the industry to change course and switch to slower-growing breeds to prevent much of this suffering. The industry won’t change unless people know the truth because chickens deserve more space, more light, more comfort.
Meat chickens (broilers)
Image credit: Animals Uncovered
Image credits: Banner and top image: Farm Transparency Project
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