In My Own Town

Watching videos and reading books definitely solidified my choice to become vegan. I see these horrible things happen to animals, and learn about how many animals die each day…but, in the back of mind I’m always trying to tell myself “Not here, not in Canada”.

Then, the other day we were not even 30 minutes from where we live, and I saw a chicken factory farm. I saw the first huge chicken housing unit. It was a two story building, with no windows. It only had vents on the side. It was probably the length of four school buses in a row.

I imagined all the chickens stacked up, bustling around in each others excrement, never being able to see the light of day. And, this had two levels. How many chickens were in there? There had to be hundreds.

As we continued down the road, there were 4 more buildings on the right…then 5 more on the left…then another group up the hill. There was a chick hatchery and more buildings....buildings with only vents on the side.
Below is an example of a one level chicken housing unit. Think of how many chickens could fit inside this ONE building.

It hit me all of a sudden, that there were thousands and thousands of chickens getting ready to be slaughtered for meat. And, this was only 30 minutes from where I live?
We can be disgusted and appalled at this....but if there is a demand for meat, farmers need to supply it.

Then I got to thinking…
Think about the town in where you live. Do you have a Swiss Chalet? Think about how many people go in there during one day and order chicken. Think about all of the chicken that have to die to supply that ONE restaurant for ONE day.
Now, count how many more restaurants there are in your town.
Where I’m at, there are 2 McDonalds, 1 Pizza Delight, 4 Tim Horton’s, 1 KFC, 1 A&W, 1 Subway, 1 Jungle Jim’s and countless other restaurants.
The amount of chicken used at these restaurants each day is in the hundreds.

This is just ONE day…in ONE town. Put all of these towns together…and you can only imagine how many thousands of chickens have to be raised for slaughter right here in our Canadian homes. This is not mentioning how many people are buying chicken from their grocery stores…or buying BEEF, or PORK.

Seeing this one chicken farm made me picture all of this in my head, and it made me sick to my stomach. And, we could argue that abuse or suffering may not happen in these specific farms, but we can not argue about the fact that the numbers needed to supply Canadians with meat is astounding.
Something to think about…