You Are What You Eat - Which Means Many of Us Are Diseased Birds

Billions of chickens go from shell to hell on factory farms. Female chicks are debeaked, their tiny beaks—and often part of their tongue or face—burned off with hot blade. Their brothers, "useless" to the egg industry, are tossed in plastic bags to suffocate to death. Hens used as egg layers are total prisoners, spending their entire lives in cramped, filthy wire cages, unable even to spread one wing.

Every part of their existence is mechanized—conveyor belts roll food by and their eggs away. When their productivity slows, they're purposely starved to force more eggs out of them (a process called "forced molting"). When their egg production declines because of illness or age or stress, no vet is called. The hens are simply yanked from their cages, often suffering broken wings and legs, thrown onto a truck for a frightening ride in all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse. There they are hung upside down, screeching and frightened. Their throats are slit and their withered bodies ground up for soup and pie fillings.

"Broilers" are raised in huge, crowded windowless sheds and pumped full of antibiotics to keep them from dropping dead from diseases caused and amplified by overcrowding and living in their own waste. Crippled birds live with chronic leg pain, bowed legs, rickets, arthritis, and other ailments—unable to reach food and water. Bred for maximum breast meat, their little legs cannot adequately support their weight. Many die of thirst and starvation. When they are between 6 to 8 weeks old, they're slaughtered.