Egg prices have suddenly become a huge discussion again. The mythical, nonexistent bird flu has been cited as a reason for increasing egg prices, but the reality is that chicken farming is simply a gross affair riddled with diseases like salmonella due to fecal contamination. Over 202 million chickens are slaughtered every single day, this means over 60 billion in a single year. These chickens are kept in extremely cramped conditions and fed antibiotics. Birds live in squalor, and the photos of their living conditions make this obvious, but it’s not the only problem. After these birds are slaughtered, they are washed in vats filled with their own feces, soaking their skin in salmonella.
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-every-day
With all this talk of bird flu, many miss the real problem, which is the inherent sickness of factory farming and the suffering of animals worldwide. Factory farming chickens has never been sanitary at any time in history, and the larger this industry has grown, the more disease and sickness we will see in humans. No one would purposely put fecal matter into their mouth, but that’s what they’re engaging in when they eat chicken. It may be cooked, but it doesn’t stop the bacteria in the chickens’ flesh from contaminating sinks and kitchen countertops.
The bird flu excuse for the wholesale slaughter of chickens is ridiculous but what we all need to understand is that chickens are raised in inherently bad conditions and there is no way to fix this. Free range is a lie, it is impossible for all chickens to be free range with the world’s demand for 60 billion slaughtered chickens a year. If someone wants to point out where we would find the space on earth to raise free range chickens and cows, they’re welcome to do so. If most people consumed meat like Americans do, we would need 5 earths just to live, and the problem is our meat consumption levels are now being adopted by third world countries. Veganism isn’t some exotic, hippy, health nut movement propagandized by do-gooders, it’s a real shift in lifestyle that we must adopt if we want to end the assault on our environment. If we want a rainforest, if we want coral reefs, if we want a future for the planet, a plant-based diet is the answer.
A LOT OF THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS WOULD BE SOLVED IF HUMANS SIMPLY HAD COMPASSION FOR ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET.