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Animal-TV.org
On October 2001, A few activists visited in a hatchery
they document the sorting procedure of live chicks for the Egg industry.
We left on Wednesday at 11:00PM
to photograph the inside of a chick hatchery in Petach-Tikva.
The foreman explained that the hatchery
produces 200,000 chicks a month that hatch once a week,
at which point the females are sent to coops,
where within a month they lay eggs to be sold as food.
He led us to the area with the hatching trays,
where workers were quickly collecting chicks as soon as they hatched,
and putting them into plastic boxes.
The crowded plastic boxes were piled on top of each other,
and when they were piled up high, they were sent to the inspection wing.
In the inspection wing, two workers examined the chicks furiously.
Each chick identified as male was thrown through the air
into a bag that lined a large garbage can,
and each female was thrown into the female box.
The male chicks quickly piled up one on top of the other.
the garbage can was a raging, stormy, yellow sea,
beaks breaking through with all their strength just to breathe,
legs trampling beaks, and the distressed tweeting of 50,000 chicks.
I looked briefly at one lonely chick in the garbage.
One of 50,000, and even so, a unique and special creation in the world.
I wasn't able to look at him for long: other chicks climbed on top of him,
pushing each other.
The garbage can was full of the movements of tiny bodies,
all just trying to breathe with whatever strength was left.
My chick was buried, disappeared,
his body crushed under the weight of the yellow burden on top of him.
One of the workers threw one of the males too far,
he landed outside the garbage can.
I bent over and picked up the chick that was thrown at my legs.
From the moment I held him, I couldn't return him to the garbage can.
His fate, just like his body, was suddenly in my hands.
And with the innocent trust of animals and babies, he was drawn to my warmth,
and closed his eyes, grabbing a little nap.
For a minute, it didn't seem to matter
that more than ten million chicks were being destroyed
by these horrible methods each year in Israel.
That little chick is worth fighting for, for his own sake.
He doesn't know about 10 million more chicks.
He will be forced to bear this horrible death by himself.
But when I turned my gaze back to the garbage can, another face popped out,
immediately covered by the legs of another face.
And what about that one? And that one? And that one?
And what kind of solution do I propose with my random adoption?
Can I go around for years like this in every hatchery in the country
and adopt tens of thousands of chicks a day?
But even so?,
How can I leave behind the chicks drowning
in their astronomical numbers to die?
The male chicks were thrown into a metal garbage can behind the hatchery
with the remains of the eggs, and we could see chicks hatching
from a few of them.
lives that begin and end in less than a day
in the crushing of squashed chicks and eggshells.
Other chicks were tied up in large garbage bags.
When I touched one of the bags, I felt the heat given off by the chicks,
pressed so close together.
I slightly widened a small hole in one of the bags,
a few chicks stuck their heads out,
pushing their way to the opening with one goal: to breathe.
Another hole in a different bag,
revealed chicks who happened to be at the bottom of the garbage can
from the inspection station
they were crushed, almost like one block...
We finally decided to take a few chicks and free them in an open field.
They probably wouldn't survive for long,
but at least they would enjoy a few minutes of walking on earth and sand.
I scooped a few chicks from the can into a small cardboard box.
And on an abandoned field, next to a row of pine trees, on moist ground,
landed eleven surprised chicks,
which began to check out their new surroundings with curiosity.
From minute to minute, their movements became more confident, more curious.
Sometimes a chick would start a short, light run, while flapping their tiny wings.
They pecked at the ground and pulled out blades of grass,
they came close to our legs and went away, came back close and went away...
When I think now of those same chicks that were freed in the field,
each one of the 200,000 chicks hatched each month in that small
egg hatchery in Petach Tikva, deserves those minimal conditions.
This isn't even about care and protection, just freedom from abuse.
Each one of them deserves to walk around, to flap their wings,
to run, to peck for food, to doze off on a branch,
to breathe.