Shipping Baby Chicks Through the Mail is Inhumane and Should Be Stopped
On October 2nd, we posted an alert asking you please to Urge the U.S. Postal Service & Your U.S. Representative to Ban Shipping Live Birds in the Mail.
The business of shipping live birds, most numerously baby chickens, is huge and lucrative, as described in this recent article in The New York Times, which focuses sympathy on the plight of farmers when the shipments fail, rather than on what the birds are put through in being shipped as cargo, an inhumane practice even when nothing goes “wrong.”
An example of what can go utterly wrong appears in this CNN report on Oct. 8th, which describes how thousands of abandoned baby chicks died this month at the Madrid airport:
There were 26,000 chicks in total, 6,000 of whom had died by the time officers arrived. Those still alive were suffering from hypothermia and trying to survive by eating the remains of their dead neighbors, said police.
The chicks were being transported in cardboard boxes which broke after getting wet in the rain, making their continued shipment "unfeasible," according to police.
What Can I Do?
Urge the United States Postal Service to stop shipping live birds and other small animals as “perishable matter” to customers. If you are in a different country, contact your own country’s postal service and lawmakers with this appeal. Please educate people about the cruelty and suffering inflicted on fragile birds and others in being shipped as ground mail and airmail. This is one of the many vital reasons to be vegan.
For more information, see:
- UPC Letter to the Postmaster General, United States Postal Service, Oct. 12, 2020
- UPC Letter to the Manager of Public Affairs, United States Postal Service, Oct. 13, 2020
- Veterinary Assessment of Shipping Live Birds as Airmail
Watch the rescue of abandoned chicks
Thank You for Being An Urgent Voice for the Birds!
United Poultry Concerns