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Today is about challenging appearances and
assumptions of extremism and normality.
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Today is a lesson in unlearning.
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Anytime we make a living being into a machine,
a supplier of inventory, the bottom line will
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always be profit. And increasing profit means
increasing output and increasing efficiency.
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The bodies of layer hens give out prematurely
from the extreme demands of production.
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Every aspect of their lives is regulated to ensure
maximum output. From controlling their laying
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cycles with days and days of persistent light
followed by long periods of complete darkness,
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to starving them for weeks at a time to force
yet another egg cycle from their worn out
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bodies, to the outright manipulation of their
very genetic makeup.
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We’ve optimized our machines, you see, and we've
bred one kind of chicken for meat and another
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kind for eggs. Because of this, the egg industry
produces millions if not a billion unwanted
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male baby chicks every year. Male layer chicks
can’t lay eggs. So they are of no use.
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To “dispose of”—as they say—these
baby chicks, they are either painfully gassed,
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slowly suffocated in plastic bags, or they
are ground up alive. We’re talking about
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the cute fluffy yellow baby chicks we adore
come Easter time.
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They are not even granted three days of life.
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This is standard practice all over the world.
This is standard practice all over the world.
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This is standard practice all over the world.
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The sisters of the egg industry’s discarded
sons get to live out their short lives in
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cramped battery cages, unable to even extend
their wings. Of course nowadays we hear about
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the rise of free-range and cage-free facilities.
But in truth, the only comfort these labels
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bring is to our own conscience. Cage-free
birds are crammed into tiny sheds and have
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twice the mortality rates of battery raised
hens.
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I hope you are starting to see the power of
this lie. Of presenting cruel confinement,
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starvation, abuse, the barbaric murder of
day-old babies and the slaughter of one-year-olds—themselves
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still children— as something completely
normal and kind—packaged in perfect little orbs.
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And we have the audacity to decorate them
in celebration of new life. To fawn over the
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very chicks who were ground up alive for their
production. To mix them into treats for our
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children and loved ones. To start our day
with the products of abject misery and call
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it “sunny side up.” We might as well start
our day by throwing chicks in a blender.
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And people say veganism is extreme.
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The animal products we perceive as mundane,
when reverse engineered, reveal a perversely
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complex and, to put it lightly, ethically
challenging, journey from genesis through
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processing and production to the end product.
That is to say, from the animals’ birth,
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through confinement, abuse, slaughter and
denigration of corpses to the shiny, happy,
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store-ready products we literally eat up without
even a single thought
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as to what the animals went through.
