The organ of student expression since 1925.

The tragic reality is that in the slaughterhouses of McDonald’s U.S. chicken suppliers, birds are dumped out of their transport crates and are hung upside-down in metal shackles, which can result in broken bones, extreme bruising, and hemorrhaging. Workers have ample opportunity to abuse live birds, and birds have their throats cut while they are still conscious. Many birds are even immersed in tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain. All this is documented on peta2.com.

Why would McDonald’s allow this? And how can its suppliers get away with it?

The fact is that there is only one federal law that regulates how animals are treated when killed for food—and do you know what worst? Chickens are excluded from that law, even though they make up more than 95 percent of all animals killed for food. As a result, abuse cases that would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges if they were inflicted on cats or dogs are legal when it comes to chickens and other birds.

How does the Black community fit into all this? McDonald’s is not Black-owned, but it sure knows how to market to Blacks. The restaurant takes our money but returns little to the campus community (except for the notorious “freshman 15”).

McDonald’s could take common-sense steps to reduce the suffering of animals killed for its restaurants and to lessen the number of injuries to slaughterhouse workers. For example, there is a less cruel method of chicken slaughter that’s available to McDonald’s suppliers called “controlled-atmosphere killing” (CAK), and it would cost the corporation nothing to demand that its suppliers use it. CAK would eliminate the worst abuses that chickens killed for McDonald’s in the U.S. currently suffer. In fact, a 2005 study about CAK that McDonald’s produced concluded that it is far better for animals than the current slaughter method.

This kind of sensible approach is precisely what consumers expect from a company that has so much influence. As detailed on peta2, McDonald’s agreed nearly a decade ago to make incremental improvements to reduce the suffering of animals raised for its eggs and to initiate audits of slaughterhouses. Unfortunately, these changes do nothing to stop the abuse of billions of chickens who are raised and killed for their flesh. Their suffering goes unnoticed.

McDonald’s is a big company, but it relies heavily on the financial support of communities like ours. Let’s send a strong message that unless McDonald’s listens to animal protection organizations such as peta2 and makes some of the changes that are listed on McCruelty.com to reduce the suffering of the animals killed for its restaurants, we will take our money elsewhere.

Heather Norwood, Peta2 Outreach Coordinator

Contributing Writer