Be cOmFoRtABlE In yOuR OwN SkIn aND LeT AnImAlS KeEp tHeIrS!!!

TOP 10 REASONS NOT TO EAT CHICKENS 1. ‘Bird Brain’ Is a Compliment Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals, able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats or dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.” Dr. John Webster of Bristol University found that chickens are capable of understanding cause and effect and that when chickens learn something new, they pass on that knowledge (i.e., they have what scientists call “culture”). How does your IQ compare to that of a chicken? http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens_brainy.asp
2. All Drugged Up
Quite simply, chickens are the most abused animals on the planet. Chickens raised for their flesh are packed by the thousands into massive sheds. They are fed large amounts of antibiotics and drugs to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them. The antibiotics make chickens grow so large, so fast that they often become crippled under their own weight. This reckless use of antibiotics also makes drugs less effective for treating humans by speeding up the development of drug-resistant bacteria.

Learn more about the overuse of antibiotics in chickens.
http://www.goveg.com/contamination_antibiotics.asp

3. Scalded to Death
Only seven weeks after they are born, chickens are crowded onto trucks that transport them to the slaughterhouse. Tens of millions of chickens have their wings and legs broken in the process every year. They are trucked through all weather extremes, sometimes over hundreds of miles, without any food or water. At slaughter, chickens are hung upside-down and have their throats slit, and they are often scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

Watch undercover footage of chickens who are mutilated and scalded to death at a Tyson slaughterhouse.
http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens.asp

4. They Don’t Even Get a Lawyer
The billions of chickens killed each year are not protected by a single federal law—the “Humane Slaughter Act” exempts birds, even though there are more than 55 times as many chickens slaughtered each year as pigs and cows combined! Chickens raised for their flesh have their sensitive beaks cut off with a hot blade without any painkillers. These intelligent animals spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, each getting about as much space as a sheet of paper, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. If factory-farm owners treated cats and dogs like they treat chickens, they would go to jail for cruelty to animals.

Learn more about the routine abuse of chickens in factory farms.
http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens.asp

5. Do You Want Poop With That?
A USDA study found that more than 99 percent of broiler chicken carcasses sold in stores had detectable levels of E. coli, indicating fecal contamination. In other words, if you’re eating chicken flesh, you’re almost certainly eating poop. Consumer Reports states there are “1.1 million or more Americans sickened each year by undercooked, tainted chicken.” Chicken flesh is also loaded with dangerous levels of arsenic, which can cause cancer, dementia, neurological problems, and other ailments in humans. Men’s Health magazine recently ranked supermarket chicken number one in their list of the “10 Dirtiest Foods” because of the high rate of bacterial contamination.

Learn more about how eating chicken and meat puts your health at risk.
http://www.goveg.com/contamination.asp

6. Lose the Fat, Avoid the Flu
Both the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization say that if the avian flu virus spreads to the United States, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with the disease. Chicken flesh and eggs are packed with cholesterol—a 3-ounce piece of skinless chicken breast meat has as much cholesterol as beef, and just one egg has nearly three times as much! This cholesterol, along with a high intake of animal fats, blocks arteries and causes heart disease. Vegan foods, on the other hand, are all cholesterol-free and much lower in fat!
http://www.goveg.com/birdflu.asp
http://www.goveg.com/heartdisease.asp

7. The Most Dangerous Factory Job in America
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, slaughterhouse workers are more than three times more likely to suffer injuries while working than workers in other manufacturing jobs, and they suffer a rate of repetitive stress injury that is 35 times higher than that in other manufacturing jobs. The industry refuses to make working conditions safer by slowing line speeds or buying appropriate safety gear, which amounts to what Human Rights Watch calls “systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment.” Big chicken companies such as Tyson and Perdue also exploit contract factory-farm operators, whom Auburn University economist Robert Taylor calls “serfs with a mortgage.” Contract factory farmers are forced to foot the bill for building and maintaining massive factory farms, which puts them deeply into debt and can drive them to financial ruin if their company cancels future contracts with them.

Learn why Human Rights Watch calls meat-packing “the most dangerous factory job in America.”
http://www.goveg.com/workerRights.asp

8. Motherly Love
In a natural setting, a hen will cluck to her chicks before they even hatch while she sits on the eggs in her nest. They peep back to her and to each other through their shells. In factory farms, eggs are taken from the mother as soon as they are laid and put in large incubators—a chick will never meet his or her parents. Hens prefer to have private nests hidden from predators and will often go without food or water in order to obtain a private nest. This demonstrates the fact that hens will sacrifice their own comfort if it means protecting their chicks.
Learn more about the personalities of these interesting animals.
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp

9. Chicken Sh*t
Raising 9 billion chickens in factory farms each year produces enormous amounts of excrement. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke says that factory farming amounts to “a frontal assault on the environment,” which leads to widespread fecal ground and water pollution. Because chickens are fed massive amounts of drugs, hormones, and pesticides, these chemicals are also found in high concentrations in their feces, which means that fecal pollution from chicken farms is especially disastrous for the environment. In West Virginia and Maryland, for example, scientists have recently discovered that male fish are growing ovaries, and they suspect that this freakish deformity is the result of factory-farm runoff from drug-laden chicken feces.
Learn more about factory farming’s toll on the Earth.
http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp

10. Better Than the Original
Do you like the taste of chicken flesh but don’t like the suffering?

No problem—try some of the fantastic alternatives now available, such as Boca Chik’n Nuggets, Gardenburger’s Meatless Buffalo Chicken Wings, and Yves Veggie Chicken Burgers. These super-tasty foods are high in protein, cruelty- and cholesterol- free, and available at your local supermarket. Instead of eggs, try tofu scramble, whip up some vegan French toast, or check out our egg-free baking tips.

"One may not eat what has a face."

"I believe in peaceful protest and not eating animals is a protest free of violence."
"During a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized we were eating the leg of an animal which had until recently been playing in the field itself. We looked at each other and said: "Wait a minute, we love these sheep-they're such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" Later, on vacation in Barbados, we drove behind a truck loaded with magnificent hens that disappeared into a poultry plant. Since then we no longer eat something that has to be killed beforehand." If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain."

glitter-graphics.complease watch the video, before you vote this one
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=fur_farm&Player=wm

Undercover investigators from Swiss Animals Protection East/International spent the past year investigating fur farms in China’s Hebei Province and found that many animals, including dogs and foxes, are still alive and struggling desperately when workers flip them onto their backs or hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them. When workers on these farms begin to cut the skin and fur from an animal’s leg, the free limbs kick and writhe. Workers stomp on the necks and heads of animals who, fighting for their lives, struggle too hard to allow for a clean cut. When the fur is finally peeled off over the animals’ heads, their naked, bloody bodies are thrown onto a pile of those who have gone before them. Some are still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Some of the animals’ hearts are still beating five to 10 minutes after they are skinned. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog on the heap of carcasses who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera, with only his eyelashes still intact.
Before they are skinned alive, animals are pulled from their cages and slammed against the ground; workers bludgeon them with metal rods, causing broken bones and convulsions but not always immediate death. Animals watch helplessly as workers make their way down the row.

Some animals killed in the Chinese fur trade were once loving companions. Millions of dogs and cats—some still wearing collars—are transported without food, shelter, or water, shoved into tiny metal crates, and stacked on trucks—as many as 8,000 animals to a truck. When they arrive for slaughter, workers toss the crates of crying, terrified, and dying animals to the ground, a drop from as high as 10 feet that causes the animals’ limbs to shatter as they crash to the ground. After they are killed and skinned, their fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species and exported to the U.S. to be sold to unsuspecting customers.

China supplies more than half of the finished fur garments imported for sale in the United States. Because a fur’s origin can’t be traced, anyone who wears any fur at all may actually be wearing the coat of a dog or cat and therefore shares the blame for the horrific conditions on Chinese fur farms. The only way to prevent such unimaginable cruelty is never to wear any fur.
peta.com
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