The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 519 points –
The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu
vox.com

Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.

As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.

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It's cheaper to out source it this way because as their farmers are contractors they don't have to adhere to the legal responsibilities they would if they ran them in their own.

They can keep their contracted farmers in debt to them indefinitely and essentially have a class of indentured servants.

I have learned more in this discussion about chicken farming than I ever thought I would.

Sometimes I just love the internet.

I thought that was the case. They probably own the IP rights to the breed too, so they keep the money circulating within their own pockets