Pheasants

In her chapter “The Sporting Life,” in Chickens’ Lib: The Story of a Campaign, Clare Druce draws attention to the game bird industry. Victims of the tradition of organized bird-shooting parties, pheasants and other avian species targeted for assault are debeaked and fitted with clamps, spectacles, and other sociopathic devices that, added to the squalor in which they are raised for the massacre that awaits them, result in inflamed nostrils and beaks, septicemia, arthritis, brain disease, tumors, blindness, chronic pain, terror and other pathologies duly reported in the Veterinary Record, the weekly journal of the veterinary profession.

It isn’t just Britain, of course. As Druce writes on page 232: “Most of our knowledge about game birds has been based on practices in the UK, but while writing this chapter I’ve looked at various websites. One day I lit upon a hauntingly sad image from America. A sturdy leather harness encircles a live pheasant as she lies helpless on the grass, denied any hope of movement, let alone escape. The device comes in different sizes to suit different types of birds, including the tiny quail, and is an aid for training gun dogs.”