The University of Chicago Vegan Society

Factory Farming Fact of the Week

Growth-promoting drugs, forced immobility and decades of selective breeding make American chickens grow to full weight in 45 days. Fifty years ago, it took 84. (1)

The chickens' bodies can't keep up with this hellish pace of growth. Health problems resulting from fast growth include crippled legs, respiratory disease and parasites (2).

Many chickens suffer from ascites, a condition in which their hearts and lungs are simply not developed enough to support their rapidly growing bodies.(3) The result is often congestive heart failure.(4) The producers see no reason to prevent these deaths, as they prove that the chickens are growing as fast as is possible. As one chicken farmer wrote, "Aside from the stupendous rate of growth, the sign of a good meat flock is the number of birds dying from heart attacks."(5)

Each one of us has the power to stop this. Every day, by choosing vegetarian diets, we can boycott industries which are cruel to animals. For more information about vegetarian diets, visit our Why Vegan? section, as well as our Nutrition section and our Resources section.

Each week, the Vegan Society selects an unfortunate but true fact about the factory farming industry, which produces the vast majority of the animal products that Americans eat. This week's fact comes from Compassion Over Killing's incredible, in-depth report on "Animal Suffering in the Broiler Industry", which examines the lives of chickens raised for their meat in America.

Photographs

Citations

1. Duncan IJH, “Welfare Problems of Meat-Type Chickens,” Farmed Animal Well-Being Conference at the University of California-Davis, June 28-29, 2001; personal correspondence with Stephen Pretanik, director of Science and Technology, National Chicken Council, Washington, D.C., January 14, 2004.

2. Bartlett B, “Performance Problems in Growing Broilers,” Poultry Digest 17 (1988).

3. Julian RJ, “Rapid Growth Problems: Ascites and Skeletal Deformities in Broilers.” Poultry Science 77 (1998): 1773-80.

4. Martin D, Researcher Studying Growth-Induced Diseases in Broilers, Feedstuffs, May 26, 1997.

5. Baskin C, “Confessions of a Chicken Farmer,” Country Journal (April 1978): 38.