Fire that killed 1.3 million chickens in Illinois

usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to pics@lemmy.world – 264 points –
i.imgur.com
32

Those poor animals. First a miserable life and then such a horrible way to die.

It's worth mentioning this isn't an isolated instance sadly

Fires on large-scale animal farms, or factory farms, are surprisingly common. Over the last decade, at least 6.5 million farmed animals, mostly chickens, perished in barn fires in the US

The true number is likely significantly higher, AWI notes, because not all states have the same reporting requirements, and because farm animals are property with essentially no legal protection from suffering

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23683141/texas-farm-fire-explosion-dimmitt-cows-factory-dairy

Looks like we are getting at the post-dystopian check point sooner than thought

That one instance has the power over millions of creatures of any species and for whatever purpose, incarcerated in one big container, to do with them as they please, is more horrific than any story i read so far.

Even more so that we are just starting to find out how intelligent animals really are.

That's messed up. You'd think they're have fire extinguishers and stuff installed.

Extinguishers wouldn't do much, but you may mean fire sprinklers, but that's probably never going to be installed. You'd have to inspect, test and maintain that system, and who wants to invest time and money in that.

I bet it smells delicious though.

It will smell of burned meat (not carefully grilled), burned hair (same material as feathers), and burned shit. Along with whatever infrastructure went up with it.

Still sound good?

Burning building and creatures burning alive? The toxic smoke from it kills chickens

Bird flu and insurance fraud?

My first thought was, does this have something to do with bird flu? Are we speculating that H5N1 was found and they needed to recoup the loss?

I mean, chicken shit can self combust in the right conditions, so hanlon's razor might apply here.

Sawdust is pretty explosive once ignited, and they usually have big blowers forcing air through the place.

They’re basically designed like blast furnaces if ignition occurs.

1 more...
1 more...

Ok seriously, what possible purpose is served by letting states have their own agencies that can have less strict requirements than federal standards?

US federal regulations are also quite weak for barn fires. Unfortunately they are not alone in that. Other countries such as Canada and the Netherlands are similar and have frequent barn fires too

Lowering the costs of production in order to max profit

Animal agriculture kills something like 200 million chickens a day. They all live short miserable lives anyway, this hardly stands out to me.

You're not completely wrong, but image of being burned alive is quite striking to me

For anyone curious about the previous commenter's stat

For chickens, the daily count is extremely large – 202 million chickens every day. To comprehend the scale, it is better to bring it down to the average minute: 140,000 chickens are slaughtered every minute.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-every-day

You’re not completely wrong, but image of being burned alive is quite striking to me

I would imagine most of them would have died of asphyxiation?

Here go the price of eggs again.

Only paying attention if it affects the price is why we'll never hear about the surprisingly frequent cases of them

Millions of birds have died on single fires before. With how things currently are, it almost certainly won't be last

They're usually only reported on locally, but they kill hundres of thousands to millions each year by being roasted alive or from toxic gases