Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.
I imagine that would be pretty difficult to do in a chicken coop. These are barns made out of corrugated steel and generally aren’t even remotely air tight. You will, ultimately, need about 10x the nitrogen you would otherwise need, and that’s if it even works.
So a special coop would need to be built for this purpose.
Chicken farmers are some of the poorest farmers in the country. They generally don’t have the means to build a special kill shed to humanely euthanize their flock. They barely have the means to keep up with Tyson and Perdue’s ridiculous bullshit.
So, while I agree, heat stroke is a fucking awful way to kill these animals, the issue isn’t just “there’s a humane method bro, just build a kill house bro”
The issue is, we are paying FAR too little for chicken, and most meat, honestly.
If you have millions of chickens to kill, you’re not so poor of a farmer that be you can’t afford to come up with a humane method to do this job.
There are several documentaries on this topic, but they don’t have a lot of authority over how many chickens they buy. They’re dictated a flock size, they pay for it, and then they pay to feed and raise them, then they sell them back to the people they bought the chicks from. Inevitably every year the chicken processor, whoever it may be, makes additional demands that they also have to pay out of pocket for.
I’m not justifying their actions, I’m saying they are stuck between two masters and they have no room to wiggle.
Out of complete ignorance - do Purdue or Tyson even run their own hatcheries/coops?
No.
It’s cheaper to out source it this way because as their farmers are contractors they don’t have to adhere to the legal responsibilities they would if they ran them in their own.
They can keep their contracted farmers in debt to them indefinitely and essentially have a class of indentured servants.
I have learned more in this discussion about chicken farming than I ever thought I would.
Sometimes I just love the internet.
Welcome to the Internet, come and take a seat.
I thought that was the case. They probably own the IP rights to the breed too, so they keep the money circulating within their own pockets
You’re not wrong and nuance is often the bane of rationality. I didn’t say it was an easy solution just a more humane one.
Why would anyone get into chicken farming if it makes you one of the poorest farmers in the country? Are they stupid?
Why do people work fast food jobs if they don’t pay a living wage?
You’re blaming the poor for being poor. If you care so strongly about this, you should start financially supporting poultry farmers to change vocations.
They probably don’t have the land needed for beef or pork would be my guess.