Do you know that I am starting to love you vegetarians?!

Do you know that I am starting to love you vegetarians?

I learned about the way chickens have been treated and have been feeling sick ever since. I don't consider myself a softy but I had parakeets, and birds have VERY distinctive personalities and emotions. Some food must be killed, but not tortured for profit.

I used to have 3 beautiful pet chickens in my city yard called Penelope, Athena and Helen. They were rescued from a battery hen farm but we made them healthy. They rewarded us with lovely eggs and did lots of good work in my vege garden. Every morning I'd call "chook! chook! chook!" and they'd come running for their feed and I'd sit with them having my coffee. They had such cute, funny and sweet personalities and were very close to each other. I'd be in stitches laughing every time they'd go crazy together and chase the neighbour's cat and rooster away.

Chickens like other birds feel pain and distress (regardless of intelligence) and it makes me feel desperately sad to think of poor chickens in cramped and dirty factory farms feeling tortured from their bodies becoming deformed in those tiny wire cages. The way chickens are treated in modern factory farms is completely immoral. I find it so hard to understand why people will buy the cheap eggs instead of the free/open range eggs just to save a few dollars but they will spend those dollars on coke or junk food. I guess a lot of people just don't think about it but thank you for thinking about it :)

You make a very valid point that we shouldn't torture animals just to make the products cheap and bigger profits. Killing an animal quickly and humanely after it has led a comfortable life is a very different story. Views differ on whether it is necessary to kill animals for food but I for one would feel better knowing that if animals are being killed for food that they are at least not being tortured. I pray for the day that we have strong animal cruelty laws for all animals, regardless of whether they are our pets or our food source.