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Comment by timcobb | Hacker News Reader

> conveyer belt of chicks get dumped directly into a meat grinder.

I haven't seen it, and correct me if this is not the case, but it doesn't strike me as a bad way to go. Getting macerated beats most of the ways humans and wild animals die. Do these chicks have any idea "what hit them"?

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It's mercifully fast but it's still absolutely mass wholesale slaughtering of chicks because they're economically inconvenient. Also as quick and near painless as the death is it's hard to get the image of the chicks going into the grinder if you've seen it, no matter how much you know that it's fast and the chick doesn't have time to feel anything it's pretty affecting.

There's an effect where the visceral emotional response to an execution method overrides the actual cruelty of the act. Lethal injection, for example, is probably horribly painful for at least some of those that experience it[1] but it looks humane to observers. Meanwhile, the trusty guillotine would be my chosen way to go since it's nearly instant.

[1] https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and...

Nitrogen suffocation any day of the week in my opinion. Your brain lives long enough after the guillotine you definitely have time to feel the pain of the cut while your brain can't even register the hypoxic effects from N2 suffocation.

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation

Good demo here: https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw?si=Fi3590AiHdTBW3r8&t=329

There's plenty of time to feel excruciating panic walking up to bend over and lose your head. The cut itself may be instantaneous but that's not really all there is to it.

It's been studied and short answer is: no. The alternative is CO2 asphyxiation, but the process is very fast and severs the spine almost immediately.

The bigger problem is chicks getting crushed to death by other chicks during processing.

Like a lot less happens to those chicks then say, when a flock of chickens is processed.

Are these crushed chicks also processed and sold (for example, as animal / pet feed)? If not, (I am wondering) why can't you just release them in the wild - in some park or forest and let nature take care of it - it's less cruel (in my opinion) if the chick becomes food for some other wildlife.

How on earth is that less cruel? Have you seen how birds eat each other?

Moral justification - it becomes food for someone else thereby giving them life.

Chickens learn from their mothers how to scrounge for food when they grow up free range. Releasing 1000s of tiny yellow chicks into the wild with no mother is way more cruel than current practises I reckon.

I reckon the chicken industry also generates way more male chickens than what a park can reasonably handle. People eat lots of chickens.

Not to get all woo, but it feels like a complete disregard for the sanctity of life. Animals are more than just an inconvenient package for protein.

Thanks I understand and I wasn't trying to be callous but does the manner of death matter in this regard?

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