Baby Chicks Ground Up Alive in the USA – Help Stop the Cruelty
Sign the Petition
Please join Species Unite in calling on the USDA to include poultry in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act to save baby chicks from suffering.
Every year in the United States, around 260 million male chicks are killed on the same day they are born because their gender makes them unprofitable to the egg industry.
Every hour, 30,000 freshly hatched male chicks suffer unimaginably cruel deaths due to the lack of protections and regulations around the methods of slaughter for poultry in the United States.
Newborn chicks can be killed by electrocution, suffocation, or, most commonly, by maceration, which means crushing these innocent babies alive in a mechanized meat grinder.
Warning: This link will take you to a video showing this process. Be advised that the sheer horror of this atrocity committed against innocent baby animals is not for the faint of heart.
Male baby chicks born into the egg industry are killed shortly after birth because egg-laying chickens are bred differently than “broiler” chickens raised for meat. Male egg-laying chickens will not grow large legs and breasts and, therefore, are not economical to raise for food. Since they cannot produce eggs, they hold no value for the industry in which they were born. These fluffy little yellow babies are therefore destroyed like trash as a byproduct of the egg industry, with no laws in place to prevent them from suffering a horrific, painful death.
This practice is so cruel and horrific that it has been banned in Germany, France, and Switzerland.
Currently, the United States has only one federal law that addresses the suffering of farmed animals at the time of slaughter: the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Unfortunately, this law excludes poultry, thus protecting only 2% of the animals slaughtered for food in the United States every year. That means 9 billion turkeys, chickens, and other birds are killed each year in the U.S. without any protections to ensure they are slaughtered in a manner that avoids excessive suffering. This number includes hundreds of millions of baby chickens.
The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act is overseen by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA has the power to do the right thing and change this law to include poultry, which would prevent the horrific methods currently used to kill hundreds of millions of baby chickens every year. The USDA has failed to act on this issue for too long, and they must be held accountable for their failure to protect innocent newborn animals from extreme cruelty.
Please join Species Unite in calling on the USDA to include poultry in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act to save baby chicks from suffering.
Speak Out!
Further Action:
Many people believe there are no ethical issues when it comes to consuming eggs because female chickens naturally produce eggs as part of their reproductive cycle. Unfortunately, the reality of the commercial egg industry means billions of animals are killed each year to produce eggs for human consumption. This includes the egg-laying hens themselves, who are slaughtered when they are just a year old as their productivity declines, and the hundreds of millions of male chicks who are ground up alive the day they are born. Although in-ovo sexing technology exists and is currently being adopted by companies in the United States, it is unlikely that this technology will fully replace the culling of male chicks anytime soon. You can make a real difference for these abused birds by reducing your consumption of eggs. If you need inspiration on how to do it, check out Species Unite’s 30-Day Plant-Powered Challenge. It offers tons of tips and recipes to help you along the way.
