I’ll never be a vegetarian, but after watching a video, I almost considered it.
As omnivores in the 21st century, we don’t have to think about where our food comes from.
We drive to Winn-Dixie and pick up a few bags of fish sticks and raw chicken breasts or go to McDonald’s and order our 10-piece Chicken McNuggets meal, unaware of the lengths taken to supply us with our vast dining options.
But in a revealing undercover video, activist group Mercy For Animals showed the public how a poultry plant in Tennessee supplies Chick-fil-A with its chicken products.
Narrated by “The Simpsons” co-creator Sam Simon, the secretly-recorded footage shows workers at a chicken factory farm in Puckett, Mississippi — as well as in the slaughterhouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee — mistreating the chickens as they are transported and handled before transforming them into the famous Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich.
The video shows workers throwing chickens in crates, sometimes crushing their wings. Leg deformities shown in close-up, Simon narrates, are a direct result of hormones fed to the animals to make them larger.
And what’s probably the most disturbing part of the video shows the birds hanging upside down at the slaughterhouse, where some miss the blade that is supposed to quickly slit their throats. Therefore, undergoing the feather removal tanks, which involve submerging in extremely hot water, alive, until another worker later manually beheads them.
We have come a long way from the days when we hunted, killed and cooked our meals every day.
Our desire for convenient dining options encourages food suppliers to produce our nourishments in the fastest way possible, sometimes disregarding the way the animals are treated and the conditions in which they are preserved before meeting their makers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has opened an investigation into the facilities, both owned by Chicago-based company Koch Foods. A spokesperson for the USDA told Buzzfeed News they “[take] the humane handling and slaughter of animals very seriously.” We should all be equally as concerned.Not only because we rely on these animals for sustenance, but also for ourselves. Keeping them in more humane conditions is healthier for both the animals and us.
One of the most disturbing moments in the footage is when one of the workers shows a picture of the area where the chickens are kept in the facility. In the picture, the viewer can see a vast number of cockroaches and maggots on the floor of the facility.
This cannot be healthy for the animals and certainly not for us as consumers either.
Not even the angry cows in Chick-fil-A commercials can justify how badly these chickens are being treated, and the worst part is this has become the norm.
When we think of animal cruelty, most of the focus is set on advocating for pets that are treated badly by their owners. Susan Sarandon and Sarah McLachlan star in powerful advertisements featuring pictures of sad dogs in cages.
But you know what you won’t see in those commercials? Chickens and other livestock.
Even though the footage will most likely not have a major effect on the food production industry itself, it’s important that we are made aware of how companies are producing the food we love, so we can inspire change.
Animals that are bred for our consumption give us the nourishment we require to live — especially to us college students since most of our diets consist of fast food — so the least we can do is treat the animals with kindness while they’re alive.
Jose Bastidas is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Caracas, Venezuela. You can reach him on Twitter @jabastidas.