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.

  • Neato
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    fedilink
    141 year ago

    This is equivalent of leaving a child in a hot car in cruelty.

      • @suchwin
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        141 year ago

        What if a kid had an incurable spreadable disease? Throw them in the hot summer car?

      • @4lan
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        1 year ago

        Did you know that humans are animals? We are not some sort of godly being separated from nature, we came from it and we are a part of it.

        You noticed that no one in here is arguing that these diseased animals should be kept alive, right? Your argument is in bad faith and it’s clear you barely thought about it before typing.

        Our problem is with how it is done, euthanasia is supposed to be humane and fast. This is an extremely slow and painful process in which the chicken is subjected to extreme distress needlessly. Just to save a few bucks.

        They could have at least incapacitated the birds first. They didn’t need to be awake for their brutal slow death.

        • @assassin_aragorn
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          01 year ago

          Did you know that humans are animals? We are not some sort of godly being separated from nature, we came from it and we are a part of it.

          Great, so you have no issues with people eating meat then? Since animals also eat meat, and humans are animals?

          • @4lan
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            11 year ago

            Yep! I have no problem with a human eating meat. Nice try tho

            My only problem lies with the manner in which we obtain that meat.

            I have the utmost respect for hunters, they actually earned their meat.
            I have no respect for people who buy factory farmed meat in a grocery store. There is nothing natural about that.

            Calm down and have your mom make you some more tendies