World Weeks for the Abolition of Meat

Posted on 27 January 2016 at 4:00AM by Nirali Shah

Considering that chickens are arguably the most abused animals on the planet, they should be one of the first animals we remove from our plates—and there’s no better time to do that than World Weeks for Abolition of Meat (or any week, really!). More than 50 billion chickens are now being slaughtered every year worldwide.

Chickens’ cognitive skills rival those of cats, dogs, and, in some cases, primates. They are adept communicators who develop complex social structures. Chickens demonstrate deep love for their family members and care for others in their group. A mother chicken starts teaching her chicks to “talk” before they have even hatched, clucking softly to them, and they cluck back to her and each other from inside their shells. By contrast, human babies cannot replicate their mothers’ sounds until they are several months old.

But the billions of chickens who are slaughtered for food or crammed into cages and used for eggs suffer horribly throughout their short lives.