Photos: Injured ‘Chickens’ Cross the Road to Protest 10 Downing Street
Photos: Injured ‘Chickens’ Cross the Road to Protest 10 Downing Street
London – Today, following the news that DEFRA plans to weaken chicken welfare regulations by legalising the catching of chickens by their legs and holding them upside down before they’re thrown into crates and sent to slaughter, two injured PETA “chickens” – one on crutches and one in a wheelchair – descended on Number 10 Downing Street to call on the government to uphold the current legislation.
As the Prime Minister left Downing Street, the mascots, holding signs reading “Hands off our Legs!” and “Leg-Catching Breaks Bones,” reminded him that allowing chickens to be picked up by the legs would contradict EU law, weaken UK law, and cause sensitive, intelligent animals even more suffering.
Video footage is available here, and images are available here (Credit: Harvey Giles)
“Every chicken is an individual who feels love, joy, pain, and fear. Catching them by their legs and inverting them causes significant stress, pain, and increases their risk of injury,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “Millions of chickens already endure relentless suffering on factory farms – it would be unconscionable for Defra to weaken the few legal protections they currently have.”
Chickens can distinguish between more than 100 faces of their own species, have full-color vision, and experience rapid eye movement sleep, which means they dream just like we do. Yet chickens killed for their flesh are crammed into severely crowded, filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At abattoirs, chickens’ throats are often cut while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in de-feathering tanks.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 207-837-6327; [email protected]
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