this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
521 points (94.8% liked)

News

23367 readers
3297 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of complete ignorance - do Purdue or Tyson even run their own hatcheries/coops?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have learned more in this discussion about chicken farming than I ever thought I would.

Sometimes I just love the internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Welcome to the Internet, come and take a seat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would anyone get into chicken farming if it makes you one of the poorest farmers in the country? Are they stupid?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

They probably don't have the land needed for beef or pork would be my guess.