Late final month, some 14,000 child chicks in Pennsylvania had been shipped from a hatchery — business 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 had 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 had been already useless. The 1000’s of survivors — principally chickens, but in addition some turkeys and quails — had been taken to Delaware’s First State Animal Middle and SPCA, which labored tirelessly to search out properties to soak up the animals as pets.
The incident has obtained intensive nationwide information protection, and it highlights an typically hidden side of America’s community of small poultry farms and yard rooster operations: the transport of thousands and thousands of stay child animals within the mail to be raised for eggs or meat.
Most chicks survive their journey via the mail, however many don’t. In 2020, 4,800 chicks shipped to farmers in Maine perished as a consequence of postal service delays, whereas in 2022, nearly 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 rooster lovers say it’s not unusual for a number of 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 after they occur, they have an inclination to obtain information consideration. It’s a weird-sounding story with aggrieved prospects and generally, a hopeful end result, just like the 1000’s 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 unit farm and the slaughterhouse
Animals raised for meals are sometimes transported quite a few instances all through their lives, they usually’re sometimes handled like cargo somewhat than dwelling, feeling animals. Typically, it’s packing containers of day-old chicks shipped via 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 unit farm to an enormous slaughterhouse.
Greater than 9 billion chickens raised for meat yearly within the US are saved on manufacturing unit farms — lengthy, windowless buildings that look extra like industrial warehouses than farms. The birds have been bred to develop huge, which causes a lot of well being issues, and in these overcrowded services, illness spreads shortly. The situations are so terrible that as much as 6 p.c die earlier than they will 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 shortly 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 rooster farms are situated near a slaughterhouse, so the journey isn’t too lengthy — typically 60 miles or much less, in line with 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 lawyer on the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for extra humane situations in animal transport, instructed me. “They may very well be transported for 45 minutes and if it’s 110 levels,” quite a lot of chickens might die. They will additionally turn out to be harassed and bodily aggressive towards each other when packed so tightly.
The US poultry business doesn’t publish statistics on what number of animals die in transport — what they name “DOAs” (useless on arrival). Within the early 2000s, in line with the information analytics agency Agri Stats, Inc., the DOA charge was round 0.36 p.c. Assuming this hasn’t modified a lot (an inexpensive assumption, because it’s not so totally different from DOA charges in lots of European international locations), round 33.8 million chickens within the US died in transport in 2024, or 92,602 daily. (The Nationwide Hen Council didn’t instantly reply to a request for business 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 printed a report that particulars a lot of mass-death occasions in rooster transport. Listed here are only a few:
- In 2018, 34,050 chickens died in transport to a Pilgrim’s Satisfaction slaughterhouse from extreme chilly and wind. (Pilgrim’s Satisfaction 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 rooster manufacturing firm — caught hearth and 1,000 birds had been burned alive, whereas a further 1,500 had been injured and euthanized.
The DOA charge is even larger for pigs, with about one million yearly both useless 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 instances to totally different farms, and sometimes throughout state strains — 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, in line with Craig, they will expertise bruising when jostled round as truckers navigate curves and bumpy roads.
Animals don’t have any federal protections in transportation journeys below 28 hours, and the federal Twenty-Eight Hour Legislation, supposed to cut back their struggling on these longer journeys, is poorly — and infrequently — enforced. The regulation additionally excludes poultry birds — the overwhelming majority of animals raised for meat.
The common shopper, if they give thought to farm animal struggling in any respect, might solely give it some thought within the context of manufacturing unit farms or slaughterhouses. However the manufacturing unit farm manufacturing chain is extremely advanced, and at every step, animals have little to no protections. That results in tens of thousands and thousands 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 1000’s who died within the latest USPS incident, and they’re simply as preventable. The meat business might 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 ought to be understood about nearly each main US meat firm, it’s this: They may all the time reduce corners on animal welfare to extend revenue except they’re legally required to vary.
