Ban Ventilation Shutdown!

Hundreds of millions of birds are being roasted and choked to death

(I don’t know if this article has any chance of reaching people in positions of power, but it might—as such, I’d appreciate if you would like, share, and restack it!)

Factory farms egregiously abuse billions of animals. They castrate them without anesthetic. They keep them trapped in tiny cages where they can’t turn around. They genetically engineer them to grow so large that they can’t move around comfortably, and thus live a dormant life with their huge bodies pressed against the sharp metal of the cage. It’s hard to imagine how the factory farms could get any crueler—how they do anything even more horrendous than what they currently do.

But they have managed to outdo themselves in cruelty via the implementation of a fairly recent practice. It’s called ventilation shutdown.

Ventilation shutdown is a method of mass killing. Recently, the bird flu outbreak has given the industry a “need” to kill off lots of birds in order to stop the spread. They’ve killed off about 100 million birds, and ventilation shutdown has been their primary method.

Ventilation shut down involves shutting off the ventilation in a barn, leading to restricted airflow and skyrocketing internal temperatures. Sometimes, hot steam is pumped into the barn. This makes it hard for the animals to breathe and elevates the temperatures inside it to somewhere between 120 and 170 degrees. The animals simultaneously die from being roasted and suffocated to death.

Take a moment to imagine what is done to these animals. They’re trapped in these cramped barns where they cannot escape. Slowly, it gets harder and harder to breathe. The temperatures rise and their skin begins to bake. It would be a bit like being killed by being drowned in a vat of boiling tea, except while that would take only minutes, this usually takes over an hour. The humane league summarizes:

Heat rises quickly in a windowless, airless shed. With no running ventilation, there’s no relief from surging temperatures—especially as heat gets pumped in from the outside. For the chickens trapped inside, it becomes harder and harder to breathe. Eventually, after enduring hours of suffering, flocks of chickens suffocate and die in agony. This scenario is real, and the results are intentional. Ventilation shutdown plus is a brutal method of putting an entire flock—or herd—of animals to death all at once.

When I studied the Holocaust in school, many years ago, one of the most horrendous things—something that’s stuck with me to this day—was the way that the Nazi’s victims were killed. They were trapped, left gasping for air, struggling to get out, choking and suffocating on poisoned gas. The horror of it defies comprehension. So it’s beyond despicable that the methods used to depopulate farm animals are considerably less humane—gassing them is merciful in comparison. How much crueler would it have been if the Nazis had used ventilation shutdown—slowly roasting their victims to death over the course of hours.

In a sane world, animal cruelty this egregious would only be carried out by lone psychopaths. In our world, however, it’s carried out on an industrial scale by a psychopathic industry. Almost a hundred million animals will be killed by ventilation shutdown. Almost a hundred million will roast and suffocate to death, because we allow the industry that controls the lives of billions of animals to operate without any regard for animal welfare. We allow them to treat thinking, feeling, intelligent creatures like mere meat machines.

If we are going to engage in the mass slaughter of animals because they have bird flu—something we should certainly not be doing—at the very least we should do it humanely. An industry that kills animals in the least humane way imaginable is not fit to continue operating in its current form.

It’s said that the measure of a society is how it treats the meek and vulnerable. If, indeed, this is the measure, we are doing rather poorly regarding our treatment of chickens. We allow those who cannot speak up for themselves to be roasted to death by the millions because the alternative might raise egg prices by a few cents.

If we are to recognize that animals matter morally, that they are not merely robots, we must ban this practice. Contact your local representatives. If you know people who have any power to affect the banning of ventilation shutdown, talk to them. This is a profound and breathtaking injustice—for the millions currently being roasted to death, its end cannot come soon enough.