How Can We Promote Respect For Chickens?
He felt her beating heart and soft feathers and flesh as a revelation of her reality as a fellow creature, no longer “something to eat.”
Weaver Brothers Egg Farm in Versailles, Ohio. Photo: Mercy for Animals.
The Idea Of “Chicken” As Food As Opposed To Chickens As Sentient Beings With Agency Is Deeply Ingrained In Our Culture. How Do We Change Hearts And Minds?
I believe we change hearts and minds by helping people to perceive chickens and relate to them as individuals who, when they are not mistreated, are full of observable vitality, desires and interests in their own right. I seek to educate people about chickens I have known by writing and talking about them and by sharing photographs and videos and by inviting people to visit our sanctuary and meet our chickens. My essay “The Social Life of Chickens” has inspired many readers to tell me how much it awakened them to the personalities and feelings and individuality of chickens. A man once told me that when he rescued a hen for the first time and held her in his arms, he felt her beating heart and soft feathers and flesh as a revelation of her reality as a fellow creature, no longer “something to eat.”
In honor of International Respect for Chickens Day, May 4th, Species Unite, a media outlet designed to transition the world off animal products with well-researched solutions, published a wide-ranging Interview with me on April 30, 2023, curated by bestselling author Anjali Banerjee, on “How Can We Promote Respect For Chickens?” This is one of the many topics we covered. The Interview can be read on Species Unite and on our website page, “Thinking Like a Chicken,” at www.upc-online.org/thinking. – Karen Davis, UPC President