Giant Chicken to Give Health Advice to Mumbaiites
Mumbai - Chicken flu is roosting around the planet, and the World Health Organisation reports that a vaccine for this deadly disease is many months away, but the good news is that PETA is already offering the perfect remedy: vegetarianism. Holding a stethoscope and a sign reading, 'Vaccine for Bird Flu: Go Vegetarian', PETA's giant chicken will give health tips to Mumbaiites:
Date: 4 February 2004
Time: 12 noon sharp
Place: Flora Fountain, Mumbai
In a vegetarian world, humans would not be threatened by chicken flu. Viruses that would dissipate in nature spread quickly in crowded factory farms, where animals are intensively reared for their flesh. These viruses eventually mutate and are spread to humans who work in filthy farming sheds and then to the general population. PETA hopes to make people realise that their eating habits have led to a huge increase in the number of slaughtered animals, which has, in turn, led to an increase in faecal and other contamination. As the demand for inexpensive meat increases, so will the number of intensive livestock operations, which act as dangerous - even deadly - viral breeding grounds.
PETA's recent undercover exposé of Venkateshwara Hatcheries, a company that operates chicken farms in India, provides an eye-opening view of the appalling conditions at poultry farms. Tens of thousands of birds are crammed into sheds with no space to stretch their wings or move about. They struggle to get food and water, frantically pushing their fellow inmates aside and desperately climbing over one another.
Because they are bred to gain large amounts of weight in a short time, many birds are immobilized by painful leg deformities and cannot support their body leg with their frail legs. PETA's undercover video footage shows sheds littered with the carcasses of chickens who have died from fatal diseases or from injuries that never received veterinary attention.
Investigators also report that the stench of ammonia at such farms is overwhelming. When workers have to don gloves and protective suits to enter a chicken farm, it is clear that the animals inside are living in unacceptable conditions. Is it really a surprise that chicken flu has evolved in Asia?
'Rejecting intensive animal agriculture in favour of more sustainable and far healthier plant-based methods of production is the only solution to all these diseases,' says Anuradha Sawhney, chief functionary of PETA India. 'We want the world to know that the best way to get inoculated from this deadly flu is to wipe all meat from your diet and go vegetarian.'
Just recently, a publication re-established that fact that SARS leaped the 'species barrier' from animals before infecting humans. A study conducted by China's SARS Molecular Epidemiology Consortium and the University of Chicago concluded that the outbreak was caused by 'culinary habits involving exotic animals'. It is now accepted that diseases like chicken flu, SARS, and mad cow evolve as a result of the continued abuse of animals. Intensively confining animals creates filth that allows diseases to spread like wildfire. In addition to chicken flu, animals on factory farms commonly carry listeria, salmonella, leukosis (chicken cancer), campylobacter and E. coli - all of which are transmissible and even fatal to humans.
For more information, please visit www.PETAIndia.com.
