Kindness to Animals

Visiting a friend in Summit, who had young chickens running around her yard, I learned for the first time as I watched a flock of them flowing gracefully out of the hedge, that chickens are beautiful birds. They have individual personalities. They love to peck things from the grass and roll in the dust.

When I was in first grade we took a field trip to the chicken farm owned by the parents of one of my classmates. I was impressed by the mechanization, seeing thousands of chickens in individual cages, with little chutes to collect the eggs. I didn't notice at the time how clean and orderly it was. The chickens I saw looked healthy; they looked like chickens. These were the 1960's, in the early days of what has come to be known as factory farming. I should have been impressed with the openness of the farmer, inviting children to see his operation.

Factory farming has now "progressed" to meet the demands of the marketplace and create as much product with as little care and work as possible [the way of all factory-based industries.] Last night I forced myself to watch a horror movie, "Meet Your Meat", a much copied, and therefore in places inoperable, disc purveyed by PETA which I picked up at the Araya vegetarian Thai restaurant in Seattle. Among the horrors shown by hidden camera, such as workers brutalizing pigs, they show stealth films taken inside chicken sheds which hold up to 100,000 chickens. [Also, refer to the book, "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer.]

There are many birds inside each cage, the manure following the law of gravity creates mountains of filth below the lowest levels of cages, into which some chickens fall. Animals are debeaked [sans anesthesia] to prevent them from pecking each other; they become trapped in the wires or under the feeding troughs, to slowly starve to death; they become disease-ridden and disfigured by disease; they lose their feathers. Dead animals are left in the cages to rot. The atmosphere is filled with drifting feathers. Patterns of light and darkness are controlled to maximize egg production. Dumpsters are filled with the dead and nearly dead. These farms are closed to the public, the sheds locked. Not to prevent people from stealing birds. To prevent the public from seeing the contents.

I say to these "farmers": unlock the sheds. Open your doors to field trips. Proudly show how well you care for your livestock to everyone. Consumers have a right to know the source of the food they select from the market.

Then, O ye friends of God! Ye must not only have kind and merciful feelings for mankind, but ye should also exercise the utmost kindness towards every living creature. The physical sensibilities and instincts are common to animal and man. Man is, however, negligent of this reality and imagines that sensibility is peculiar to mankind, therefore he practices cruelty to the animal. In reality what difference is there in physical sensations! . . . The poor animal cannot speak, it can neither show its suffering nor is it able to appeal to the government. If it is harmed a thousand times by man it is not able to defend itself in words nor can it seek justice or retaliate. . . . Educate the children in their infancy in such a way that they may become exceedingly kind and merciful to the animals. If an animal is sick they should endeavor to cure it; if it is hungry, they should feed it; if it is thirsty, they should satisfy its thirst; if it is tired, they should give it rest.

~ 'Abdu'l-Baha