Living a Buddhist Life: Vegetarianism by Bodhipaksa

Chickens are reared in more intensive conditions than any other farm animal. Despite the increased availability of so-called free-range eggs the overwhelming majority of laying chickens still live in tiny wire cages in vast sheds. Usually there are five birds to a cage, and each bird has a living space slightly less than the size of this opened book. There is hardly enough room to turn round. Birds kept in these conditions develop ‘vices’, or destructive behavioural habits, and they often have their beaks painfully severed to prevent them from pecking at, and even eating, each other. It’s worth adding that chickens are not particularly nasty creatures. It’s simply intensely frustrating for them not to be able to fulfil any of their natural urges. They aren’t able to stretch their wings, dust-bathe, walk, establish social structures, for- age for food, or sit on eggs. Take away these natural outlets and birds go mad.

The wire of the cages imprisoning the birds irritates their feet, resulting in sores that will go untreated (with 30,000 birds in a shed there is no personal attention). The birds’ feet can even become ‘welded’ to the wire mesh as their claws or flesh grow around the metal. If they are lucky they are within reach of food and water when this happens.

Laying birds are usually killed at the end of a year. They are all females, of course. Skilled workers separate the males from the females at one day old and treat them as a waste product. They may be killed by gassing, or suffocated in rubbish bags, or they may be thrown into boxes where they crush and suffocate each other. Some, it is claimed, are thrown live into mincing machines to be used for animal feed.’ They look exactly like the fluffy yellow Easter chicks that we see on greetings cards.

Many so-called free-range chickens don’t fare much better. Despite the more attractive label, many rarely get outside. They are often crammed into sheds in their tens of thousands in conditions that are far from natural. These overcrowded conditions also prevent the birds from fulfilling their full range of natural activities and from establishing a proper social structure. Bullying and stress are common. A small group of dominant and aggressive hens can prevent the others from getting to the outside world, making a nonsense of the ‘free-range’ label.

Chickens for eating are called ‘broilers.’ They live (you’re probably getting the hang of this by now) in huge sheds in tens of thousands, sometimes crowded together on the floor in a living carpet, sometimes in racks of cages. The amount of space recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture gives them about the same amount of room, when fully grown, as a battery hen.

They stand on their own accumulated faeces, which quickly become disease-ridden. The lights are dimmed to reduce the stress of overcrowding so the stockman probably won’t see animals that are ill or have died. In any event there may be only one stockman for tens of thousands of birds, making effective supervision impossible. Health experts consider these sheds to be a serious hazard for workers. As one writer points out: Researchers warned chicken farmers to spend as little time as possible in their sheds and to wear a respirator when they go in. But the study said nothing about respirators for the chickens.