Chicken “Chucking” Contest:
Karen Davis’s Letter Published Today
Garry Unger and Theresa Unger, half of the Ride Me for a Nickel team, cradle frozen chickens before chucking them onto Martindale Pond during the 19th annual International Chicken Chucking Competition on Sunday. - Beth Audet, Niagara This Week
UPC President Karen Davis’s Letter opposing this contest appears
today, March 4, in The Standard newspapers in the Niagara
region of Ontario.
See:
Niagara letters to the editor
Chicken chucking event 'offensive'
Re: Teams chuck chickens for charity, Feb. 18
I and the people who sent me this article find the article and the activity it depicts deeply offensive. I hope there are others who share our view that playing games with the dead bodies of birds, or with the dead body of any fellow creature, goes way beyond "stupid."
This type of entertainment is not charitable. It is heartless. It disrespects the beings who previously occupied the dead flesh and who endured a life of absolute misery, assuming the chickens being used came from a standard commercial operation.
Since there are many types of objects people can play games with that are not corpses, there must be some kind of ill thrill for some folks knowing they are throwing dead animals around. It's bad enough what these poor chickens go through so people can needlessly eat them. But to think of what they went through, only to end up being used in this way, is sickening.
What this contest shows is fundamental disrespect for the life (and death) of other creatures. Captive tigers — does anyone have a problem with that? Does anyone feel any pity for these animals? I write this letter hoping and believing there are people who care. I want to assure them their sympathy for animals, including chickens, is fully justified and shared by many other people in this world.
Karen Davis
President, United Poultry Concerns
Machipongo, Va.