We all need to get in a flap about the gassing of 200,000 chickens in New Zealand

In this article May Safely Graze contributor Dr Lynley Tulloch condemns the mass gassing of 200,000 birds this week after avian influenza was found on a layer farm.

 

The spread of a highly pathogenic subtype of avian influenza on Hillgrove Egg Farm in rural Otago, belonging to Mainland Poultry,  has resulted in the entire population of 200,000 chickens being killed.  This strain is different from the H781 bird flu virus that has been responsible for the deaths of wild birds and mammals globally, and is not thought to be a threat to humans.

This is a biosecurity incident and it is rightfully being taken seriously. Concerns for economic implications regarding exports are one worry for the Industry. Consumers are also anxious that egg supply will be interrupted (it won’t apparently).

Yet, there is so much more to this than human-centred or industry concerns. New Zealand has a reputation for high animal welfare standards and yet these chickens were killed in one of the cruellest ways imaginable. Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Stuart Anderson announced to the media that the birds would be ‘humanely culled’ (an oxymoron) with the farmer’s cooperation. Ray Smith was further quoted as saying: “Poultry farms are always having to depopulate and repopulate. They have large containers and they go into the containers and it is effectively a carbon dioxide process.”

The killing of 200,000 live and sentient chickens is a serious ethical issue. Chickens are intelligent, feeling, problem-solving, walking, flapping marvels. It’s high time that the implications for the chickens was given precedence over sunny-side-up eggs and capitalistic profits.

First up, how do you kill 200,000 birds over a few days with carbon dioxide? What are the methods of ‘humanely culling’ or ‘depopulation’? These are weasel words designed to distract and conceal a horrific process. Information on this requires a deep dive into the Code of Welfare: Layer Hens, published by the Ministry for Primary Industries.  ‘Humane destruction’ of hens according to MPI includes ‘gas suffocation’.  I am quite perplexed as to the use of the word ‘humane’ when linked with the painful extinguishing of life by administering gas.

For disease control purposes, carbon dioxide (CO 2) is often used in on-farm killing of large groups of poultry, in both mobile gas container units and whole house gassing exercises. When using this gas the hens generally asphyxiate within two minutes. In the early stages they experience breathlessness, hyperventilation and irritation of the nasal mucosa. Veterinarian Dr. Jonas Watson says that gassing also causes headshaking, gasping and convulsions in chickens prior to the cessation of brain activity.

The egg-laying industry is fraught with animal welfare issues even before any concerns about viruses or culling is mentioned. MPI also endorses the shredding of day-old male chicks in a giant macerator amounting to 2.5 million of these babies every year.  Their definition of humane killing also involves stringing spent hens up and then stunning them electrically, followed by neck dislocation and exsanguination (slitting their throats). I am positive that MPI and I do not share the same concept of what ‘humane’ means.

It’s a terrible lot layer hens have. Colony cage hens are only given the size of an A4 piece of paper each and live in crowded and noisy sheds their entire lives. This is enormously stressful and often leads to feather picking and cannibalism. Reducing a living being’s entire life to a biological function is exploitative and cruel. One might even argue that is not a life worth living. Having rescued a small number of these chickens at eighteen months old when they went off the lay, I can testify to their dull eyes and featherless bodies.

Chickens do not deserve this. No living and feeling creature should end their lives in such a cruel way. The only reason they are in this position at all is because they are being ruthlessly exploited to produce eggs in the first place.

It’s very easy to look the other way and not think about the lives of these birds.  But it’s not good enough, and we need to get into a flap about it. We have known for a long time that the gassing of animals is highly distressing to the dying animal. We need to reevaluate our food systems and not subject living beings to this kind of torture. The mass factory farming of egg-laying chickens needs to stop.

Animals need to be given the same essential rights as humans, otherwise we will continue to misuse our power by exploiting, harming and killing them.  Such a reorientation will include both how  we co-exist with our fellow Earth beings, and how we operate our society economically and socially.

 

 

 

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an Early Childhood Education Lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT).   She is a long-time animal activist.