Don’t settle for ‘less’ cruelty
to animals; strive for none

Editors, Asheville Global Report,

While we have come to expect gross distortions of the facts from the Bush administration and corporate America, I was surprised to read an remarkable bit of home-grown spin in the May newsletter of Asheville’s French Broad Food Co-Op.

In two articles about companies that sell eggs to the Co-Op, the writer said that both companies “replace” their hens annually. She never mentioned that “replacing” almost always means cutting off their heads. There is no retirement home for chickens who no longer put out the desirable quota of eggs. Chickens have been shown to be as intelligent and sensitive as dogs and cats and can live to 15 years of age. Yet these groovy, down-home businesses sentence chickens to death after one year of service.

Both companies profiled purchase chicks from hatcheries. Most hatcheries slice off the ends of the female birds’ beaks with a hot blade shortly after they are born. This painful mutilation is done without the use of anesthesia. Half of the chickens born at these facilities are male. They can’t be raised as “broilers” since birds raised for meat are genetically different. Thus, every year in the United States, 250 million male birds are killed the day they are born. One common method to dispose of the males is to grind them up alive. When you buy eggs at the Co-Op, your are complicit in grinding up these babies.

No doubt some small “farmers” treat their chickens better than large commercial facilities which cage chickens together so tightly that they cannot even stretch their wings. Most small “farmers” don’t force chickens to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into their feet. Nor do they withhold food and water for days to shock chickens into laying more eggs. But that doesn’t mean that their methods are humane.

Why settle for something that is a bit lower on the cruelty scale? Eating eggs clearly contributes to animal abuse. Since so many healthier and compassionate alternatives exist, why not make the commitment to go vegan today? For more information, check out www.peta.org/feat/hiddenlives/, www.upc-online.org, and GoVeg.com.

Stewart David

Asheville, North Carolina

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