Chickens at Slaughter

Toronto

There are two chicken slaughterhouses in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that, combined, take the lives of nearly one million birds every day. That’s equivalent to the entire human population of the GTA every 6 days. These tiny, fragile birds are only one month old with downy feathers, eyes still blue, and little peeps instead of clucks of grown chickens. Their tender skin is scalded by sitting in their own urine. Workers at the farm roughly shove them into the crates, often breaking their fragile bones and even tearing off their legs. They have been genetically altered to grow so rapidly that they cannot stand, they suffocate under their own weight. Their still blue eyes and tiny peeps confirm their brand-newness to the world. They arrive in open transport trucks, each containing 10,000 shivering, scared, baby birds. They remain curious of us, and the sun and sky that they’ve never witnessed before. They feel. They suffer. They are sentient.