Late final month, some 14,000 child chicks in Pennsylvania have been shipped from a hatchery — industrial operations that breed chickens, incubate their eggs, and promote day-old chicks — to small farms throughout the nation. However they didn’t get far. They have been reportedly deserted in a US Postal Service truck in Delaware for three-and-a-half days with out water, meals, or temperature management.
By the point officers arrived on the postal facility, 4,000 child birds have been already lifeless. The hundreds of survivors — largely chickens, but additionally some turkeys and quails — have been taken to Delaware’s First State Animal Middle and SPCA, which labored tirelessly to search out properties to absorb the animals as pets.
The incident has obtained in depth nationwide information protection, and it highlights an typically hidden side of America’s community of small poultry farms and yard hen operations: the delivery of tens of millions of stay child animals within the mail to be raised for eggs or meat.
Most chicks survive their journey by the mail, however many don’t. In 2020, 4,800 chicks shipped to farmers in Maine perished attributable to postal service delays, whereas in 2022, virtually 4,000 chicks destined for the Bahamas died on the tarmac at Miami Worldwide Airport from warmth publicity. There are many different tales of chicks dying within the mail, and yard hen lovers say it’s not unusual for just a few birds out of each 50 or in order that they order from hatcheries to die within the mail or shortly after arriving.
Mass-casualty mail-order occasions are uncommon, however once they occur, they have a tendency to obtain information consideration. It’s a weird-sounding story with aggrieved prospects and typically, a hopeful consequence, just like the hundreds of rescued birds in Delaware. However many extra farmed animals die in transportation than most of us notice. That’s as a result of these animals — whether or not raised by yard poultry lovers or main meat-producing conglomerates — are commodities, and their deaths merely a margin of error baked into the economics of the annual hatching, elevating, and slaughtering of billions of chickens for meals.
What occurs between the manufacturing facility farm and the slaughterhouse
Animals raised for meals are sometimes transported quite a few occasions all through their lives, they usually’re usually handled like cargo slightly than dwelling, feeling animals. Typically, it’s bins of day-old chicks shipped by the USPS from a small hatchery to a small farm. However extra typically, it’s truckloads of fattened-up chickens or pigs moved from a manufacturing facility farm to an enormous slaughterhouse.
Greater than 9 billion chickens raised for meat yearly within the US are saved on manufacturing facility farms — lengthy, windowless buildings that look extra like industrial warehouses than farms. The birds have been bred to develop huge, which causes a variety of well being issues, and in these overcrowded amenities, illness spreads rapidly. The circumstances are so terrible that as much as 6 % die earlier than they’ll even be trucked to the slaughterhouse. That’s over half a billion animals annually.
As soon as the survivors attain about 6.5 kilos, they’re rapidly and tightly packed into crates. These crates are then stacked one atop one other onto a truck certain for the slaughterhouse. They’re nonetheless infants, at simply 47 days outdated, however 6.5 kilos is their common “market weight.”
Most hen farms are situated near a slaughterhouse, so the journey isn’t too lengthy — typically 60 miles or much less, based on the Nationwide Hen Council.
However “even when it’s a brief journey, the climate and the stocking density has an enormous impact on mortality,” Adrienne Craig, an legal professional on the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for extra humane circumstances in animal transport, informed me. “They may very well be transported for 45 minutes and if it’s 110 levels,” loads of chickens may die. They’ll additionally turn out to be careworn and bodily aggressive towards each other when packed so tightly.
The US poultry trade doesn’t publish statistics on what number of animals die in transport — what they name “DOAs” (lifeless on arrival). Within the early 2000s, based on the info analytics agency Agri Stats, Inc., the DOA charge was round 0.36 %. Assuming this hasn’t modified a lot (an affordable assumption, because it’s not so totally different from DOA charges in lots of European nations), round 33.8 million chickens within the US died in transport in 2024, or 92,602 day by day. (The Nationwide Hen Council didn’t instantly reply to a request for trade DOA figures.)
To place that into context, round 33 million cattle are slaughtered for beef annually within the US.
In a 2023 report, the Animal Welfare Institute revealed a report that particulars a variety of mass-death occasions in hen transport. Listed here are only a few:
- In 2018, 34,050 chickens died in transport to a Pilgrim’s Pleasure slaughterhouse from extreme chilly and wind. (Pilgrim’s Pleasure occurred to be the prime donor to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.)
- In 2020, greater than 9,000 birds raised for Butterfield Meals died after being held in a single day in unheated transport trailers when the temperature fell to minus 17 levels Fahrenheit.
- In 2022, a transport truck carrying birds for Lincoln Premium Poultry — Costco’s in-house hen manufacturing firm — caught fireplace and 1,000 birds have been burned alive, whereas an extra 1,500 have been injured and euthanized.
The DOA charge is even larger for pigs, with about 1,000,000 yearly both lifeless on arrival on the slaughterhouse, unable to maneuver or sustain with different pigs after unloading, or in such a horrible state that they have to be euthanized on arrival.
Just like poultry birds, pigs and cattle are topic to excessive temperatures, however they’re typically transported a lot additional distances. And a typical beef or dairy cow is shipped a number of occasions to totally different farms, and infrequently throughout state traces — not simply the journey from the farm to the slaughterhouse. These lengthy distances imply the animals live in each other’s urine and feces whereas on the truck, and, based on Craig, they’ll expertise bruising when jostled round as truckers navigate curves and bumpy roads.
Animals haven’t any federal protections in transportation journeys below 28 hours, and the federal Twenty-Eight Hour Regulation, supposed to scale back their struggling on these longer journeys, is poorly — and infrequently — enforced. The legislation additionally excludes poultry birds — the overwhelming majority of animals raised for meat.
The typical shopper, if they consider farm animal struggling in any respect, could solely give it some thought within the context of manufacturing facility farms or slaughterhouses. However the manufacturing facility farm manufacturing chain is extremely advanced, and at every step, animals have little to no protections. That results in tens of tens of millions of animals dying painful deaths annually in transport alone, and nearly no firms are ever held accountable.
These deaths are simply as tragic because the hundreds who died within the latest USPS incident, and they’re simply as preventable. The meat trade may select to pack fewer animals into every truck, require heating and cooling throughout transport, and provides animals ample time for relaxation, water, and meals on lengthy journeys.
However such modest measures would reduce into their margins, and if there’s one factor that needs to be understood about virtually each main US meat firm, it’s this: They are going to all the time reduce corners on animal welfare to extend revenue except they’re legally required to vary.
