The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu [View all]

[jfz9580m]

This is shockingly inhumane:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23963820/bird-flu-surge-us-ventilation-shutdown-veterinarians

This fall, bird flu is surging again. So far in October and November, it’s infected dozens of factory farms largely in the Midwest, including on turkey farms raising animals for Thanksgiving season — resulting in the extermination of 4 million chickens and turkeys in just a month and a half.

I use the word “extermination” deliberately. Although many outlets have written that the birds on farms hit with bird flu are being “euthanized,” the reality of these mass killings is far from the painless end implied by that term.

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.

This is a hard read but it is a reality we cannot ignore. Jfyi - for anyone interested in animal welfare, Maria Bolotnikova’s work is great. She is a journalist who is absolutely dedicated to giving these issues the attention they deserve.
I find these kinds of stories very hard to read, but I force myself to skim them to spread awareness.

Our treatment of animals is not based in science or reason:
https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/animal-ethics-three-philosophies-animal-ethics

I never say that everyone should be vegan nor have unreasonable expectations. But surely this should not be happening.