Issue 10

The poultry industry is one of the most wasteful and cruellest intensive farming industries. Millions of male chicks are thrown into dustbins to die, at just a few days old, because they are of no commercial interest for the meat industry. Male chicks are also worthless to the egg industry because they don’t lay eggs, so every year millions of them are tossed into trash bags to suffocate or are thrown—while still alive—into high-speed grinders called “macerators.”

Several research teams have recently published findings on chicken intelligence that have challenged old notions about avian cognitive abilities.

Even if this were a sound argument, it would not justify rearing animals in inhumane conditions, and it would only justify hunting wild animals.

As I write this, in early 2006, we are more than twenty years into the AIDS era. Like many, a large part of my life has been irreversibly affected by aids.