Wings not worth the horrors

I would like to thank the Hook for the article in the November 18 paper about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' effort in Charlottesville to highlight the suffering of the 750,000,000 chickens killed each year to supply Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. It takes a special kind of courage to look with a fresh eye at our habits and traditions and their very real and far-reaching consequences.

I could tell that reporter Courteney Stuart was trying valiantly to be balanced, but I feel that, in the end, she just couldn't bring herself to accept the reality of the horrors we inflict on so many other beings, just to eat our bucket of wings.

I understand how difficult that can be. I've just been learning about the poultry industry myself in the last couple of years, and what I have found out about the staggering numbers involved and the horrific cruelty spawned by maximizing profit and justified by viewing these second neighbors as non-living commodities, is incredibly hard to grasp.

Chickens and turkeys and ducks and geese are not usually recognized as individuals who love life, who fear death, who feel pain, who desire not to suffer, who know how to communicate, who have relationships and who are born with their own natures that deserve to be respected. But that is the truth. Not only are we creating a hell of unimaginable proportions for them, we risk hurting ourselves at the same time.

We don't need to make our bodies their graveyards to get our protein– protein is found in almost every plant food we eat. We aren't really sure what ingesting all their terror, not to mention the hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals given to these birds will do to us, but scientists have some guesses– and it's not good.

The waste created by this industry ends up in our waterways and our air. The food that goes to feeding these hundreds of millions of unfortunates could be going to feed people... and the list goes on and on.

Whatever happens between PETA and those who make money from the flesh of our fellow creatures, there can be no doubt that this issue deserves more scrutiny from every consumer. Check it out for yourself.

R. Faris
Albemarle

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