What the News on the End of Male Chick Culling Reveals About Consumers
Image by Farm Sanctuary via Flickr
It’s eye-opening how the news of male chick culling coming to an end in 2020 (at least among 95% of egg producers in the U.S.) has horrified people. Just read people’s reactions and comments to this news on social media. For most people, the practice of male chick culling is breaking news alone. It just goes to show how many people are still in the dark about the horrors of the meat, dairy and egg industry.
Grinding, gassing and suffocating male chicks to death is disgustingly cruel, but it’s also just a fraction of the violent and sadistic abuse, mistreatment and deaths that billions of farmed animals endure every day—from the moment their born, to the moment their slaughtered.
Image by Agricultural Research Service via Wikimedia Commons
With so much information, pictures and videos available online these days, one doesn’t need to look far or spend much time to learn about what really goes on in factory farms. So why are so many people surprised when they hear about this sort of abuse? It's because the animal agriculture industry has worked hard to lead us to believe that our meat-, dairy- and egg-based diets have no cruel consequences (aside from the actual act of killing animals, of course).
A large part of this unawareness also has to do with how few of these reports on animal abuse in factory farming hit mainstream media. So when they do, many people believe they are just isolated incidents. And since it’s rarely publicized, it rarely enters mainstream consciousness, making it easy for people to forget what they learned and “fall back asleep”, continuing on with their cruelty-causing diets.
Unfortunately, even though people are appalled by the news of male chick culling and are applauding the end of it (among 95% of U.S. egg producers), many are likely to continue eating eggs and supporting the industry that enslaves and tortures egg-laying hens, broiler chickens and other farmed animals.
If you are just now awakening to the horrors of the industry and are looking to make a change (and I hope you will!), here are resources to use and share with friends and family to help you and others transition toward a compassionate, cruelty-free diet:
http://www.peta.org/living/food/egg-replacements/
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan
https://www.friendsofanimals.org/img/Vegan_Starter_Guide.pdf
http://www.the30dayveganchallenge.com/fe/29373-30-day-vegan-challenge