Chick gas survivors made BBC News, but what about all the others who weren’t so lucky?
Some of the eight male chicks who survived being gassed and turned into animal feed. | Credit: Linjoy Wildlife Sanctuary via BBC
BLOG: Eight very lucky baby chickens have found their way to an animal sanctuary after being found alive in a bag containing thousands of dead birds. Their story made a great ‘feel good’ BBC Leicestershire report, but why aren’t we hearing more about the millions of other chicks who aren’t so lucky?
Despite the countless billions of animals killed each year for human consumption, stories of animals who self-liberate or narrowly escape the hands of the slaughtermen always make for excellent clickbait - so much so that we dedicated an entire video to the phenomenon of how people root for animals who escape, and how it perfectly demonstrates our mass cognitive dissonance.
The latest feel-good story to make headlines is about a small group of lucky survivors of the egg industry, eight fluffy balls of feathers now living the high life at Linjoy Wildlife Sanctuary in Staffordshire, UK. BBC Leicestershire, one of the national broadcaster’s regional newsrooms, picked up on the story knowing full well that people love cute baby animals, and ones that made a narrow escape at that.
In the report, the BBC revealed that the chicks had been found with 6,000 other dead birds, which sounds horrendous enough but it pales in comparison to how many male chicks are gassed, ground up alive in macerators or simply sealed up in plastic bags and left to slowly suffocate.
The BBC report does mention that the chicks - who were supposed to die from being gassed with all the others - were destined to become animal feed and that the killing of male chicks, seen as unwanted and unprofitable by-products of the egg industry, is standard practice.
"Once they're dead they're put in bags and boxes to be shipped out for animal feed for things like reptiles and birds of prey,” said Lindsay Newell, founder of Linjoy Wildlife Sanctuary.
"These guys, how they have survived that I don't know. It begs the question of how many more survived and succumbed to it prior to being discovered because they were all crushed on top of each other."
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What we don’t hear about is the enormity of this issue, and the cost in lives so that we can have our scrambled egg breakfasts, cakes and quiches. Every year in the UK, around 29 million male chicks are killed within hours of their birth, and as many as seven billion chicks globally, according to the Humane League UK. That’s the world’s human population, every single year.
The issue of male chicks is a hugely contentious issue for the egg industry and the animal welfare campaign organisations that oppose culling and promote higher-welfare alternatives. In February, Germany, where they kill around 45 million male chicks per year, announced a ban on the practice but is placing its hopes on new sexing technology. Sadly, as we discussed at the time, there are ways for egg producers to get around the ban and when all is said and done, it’s merely a distraction from the real issues.
Compared to the lifetime of misery that awaits every female chick - to be raised in cramped sheds to lay more eggs than their fragile bodies can handle - some might even say that a relatively quick death for males is merciful. And from a welfare point of view, that would be hard to argue. But why would we have to choose from the lesser evil when we can thrive without eggs at all?
Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.
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