Also shown in the Mercy For Animals video is the debeaking procedure in which chicks are inserted en mass into a laser cutter where they dangle by their beaks, struggling, while burns are inflicted that make part of their beak fall off in a week.
Nor does the egg industry want to waste any time letting a chick peck its way out of its shell to start its tour of duty on the egg farm, if it's female.
The hatchery's "separator" machine efficiently disconnects newborns from their shells at the price of the few which fall to the ground or get caught in the machine and "washed" along with the equipment.
Asked about the panting, damp newborns on the floor, half born and half dead, a worker tells the MFA investigator, "Some of them get on the floor and get wet and then they're no good."
Like veal calves on dairy farms, egg industry chicks experience no moments with their mothers despite their innate biological urges. Their first memories will be of blades, pain and terror not of a mother in the mechanized hell the egg industry has devised to bring cheap product to the market.
Some veterinarians condemn the procedures shown in the video, which are both legal and accepted industry practices--including in so-called free range operations--and approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Hello?
"Intense pain, shock and bleeding result" from debeaking--which is done to offset the effects of crowding--and "some chicks may die outright in the process," says Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D., Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California who has specialized in farmed animals and chickens. "There is loss of weight because the chicks are too painful or disfigured to eat properly, sometimes because the tongue is injured or severed during the process."
Illinois veterinarian Debra Teachout agrees.
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