US Farms Want Less Regulation For “Cruellest” Slaughter Method
Agriculture associations want rules relaxed to make it easier to use the ‘cruellest’ - and ‘cheapest’ - method to mass-kill birds, which has been described as “basically cooking animals alive”.
Credit: We Animals Media
US farms are lobbying the government to relax the rules around an infamous mass-slaughter method where entire barns are heated until flocks of birds are essentially cooked alive, reports The Guardian.
Lobbying for the controversial and ‘cruellest’ comes as farms across the US struggle to deal with the ongoing bird flu epidemic.
Commonly known as bird flu, avian influenza is a highly contagious and deadly virus that infects chickens, ducks, turkeys, and wild birds, and spreads through their saliva, mucus, and feces. The virus has been circulating in migrating waterfowl in Europe and Asia for about a year.
Birds who contract the infection tend to exhibit symptoms, such as depression, paralysis, coughing, and swelling of the eyes. When the virus is detected on a farm, officials will suffocate flocks en masse with firefighting foam or by filling the barns with carbon dioxide.
However, farms in the US can also use “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), but only as a last resort. Regarded as the “cruellest option”, VSD+ exposes birds to high heat for at least three hours, essentially cooking the birds alive.
The controversial VSD+ culling method is currently outlawed in Europe as it’s listed as “likely to be highly painful”. In the US, this extreme method of slaughter is legal, but farms must seek approval to use it and are only permitted when no other methods can be used.
Now, agriculture associations across the U.S. are lobbying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to make the ‘cooking alive’ process a “preferred” method - one that can be used without seeking approval and without considering alternative methods, reports The Guardian.
“Although the avian flu outbreak is global, only the US has put ethics completely aside and intentionally induced heatstroke to kill millions of animals,” Dena Jones, director of the Animal Welfare Institute’s farm animal programme, told press.
The scale of the suffering so far can be seen through the staggering numbers of deaths: nearly 50 million birds have been culled or killed from bird flu this year. One egg factory in Iowa alone recently culled 5.3 million hens by roasting them alive.
Animal rights group Animal Outlook recently revealed experiments by North Carolina State University into the effects of VSD+ on chickens. The records uncovered that VSD+ causes “extreme suffering” to the hens as they “writhe, gasp, pant, stagger and even throw themselves against the walls of their confinement in a desperate attempt to escape”.
“Eventually the birds collapse and, finally, die from heat and suffocation,” the group said.
Campaigners also state that this cruellest method of culling is unfortunately favored by the industry as it is the “easiest and cheapest”.
As the bird flu outbreak continues to spread across the world, millions more birds are expected to be culled in the US.
Bird Flu in Humans
Although officials have stated that the risk to public health from bird flu is low, it is possible for humans to contract the disease when droplets or dust particles in the air are breathed in, or when a person touches something that has the virus on it then touches their mouth, eyes or nose, according to the CDC. When humans are infected with the virus, there can be grave consequences - the fatality rate is around 60 percent.
Credit: We Animals Media
However, disease experts have warned that this year’s record-breaking bird flu outbreaks that have hit the United States, United Kingdom and Europe, increase the chance that avian viruses could mix, mutate, and infect human populations. COVID-19, Ebola, and MERS are just some of the recent zoonotic diseases to have passed from animal sources to the human population.
Solutions For Change
Food system change is needed now more than ever before. Rather than continuing to rely on the mass slaughter and consumption of animals, and causing agonizing animal suffering and risking new infectious diseases, we have the opportunity to transform the current system into something safer, healthier and more sustainable.
From plant-based cheeses to cultivated meats, technology is revolutionizing food and agriculture production. You can learn more about the game-changers - the people leading the way toward a world without factory farms and slaughterhouses - with our future of food podcast episodes here.
With animals, people, and the planet in desperate need of solutions for change, what we eat matters now more than ever. And we all have a role to play in transforming the current food system. Sign up for our free, 30-Day Vegan Challenge here to learn how to live in line with your animal-loving values.
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