With the fast-moving strain of avian flu afflicting millions of birds at poultry farms throughout the country, farmers are looking for quicker, more efficient ways to kill their infected flocks.





Earlier this week, John Clifford, the chief veterinary officer for the USDA, made an appalling suggestion regarding the best and “most humane” way to quickly kill the infected birds.





The Washington Post, “At a hearing organized to discuss the impact of the avian flu, which has affected nearly 50 million birds in the United States, he suggested that farmers could have killed infected chickens and turkeys more efficiently by shutting off ventilation systems at poultry barns.” According to, “At a hearing organized to discuss the impact of the avian flu, which has affected nearly 50 million birds in the United States, he suggested that farmers could have killed infected chickens and turkeys more efficiently by shutting off ventilation systems at poultry barns.”





Current, approved methods of killing the infected birds include using carbon dioxide gas or a water-based foam that kills birds within about a minute.





The author explains:





All things being equal, cutting off ventilation to more than a million birds at once is largely considered a crueler way to kill chickens. Without ventilation, temperatures rise, air becomes still, and chickens suffer; their organs eventually fail, they become lethargic, and they eventually die of either heat or suffocation or both. It's the sort of thing that happens by accident—like it did earlier this year at a battery farm in China, where some 6,000 chickens died, rather than by choice.





Cutting off the ventilation and causing birds to suffocate or overheat is beyond inhumane and makes it even clearer that the chicken industry puts profits before the welfare of the animals it keeps in hellish factory farm conditions.



