Do not support factory farms

To the editor:

The more than 5 million chickens and turkeys are not dying a painless death. They will suffer and feel terror while they die. They will fight for their lives because, like us, they want to live. Unfortunately, they have been suffering since the day they were hatched. With chicks destined to be 'laying hens,” instead of seeing their mothers, they were moved down a conveyor belt and roughly thrown about while being 'sexed.” The male chicks were thrown in grinders to die or in garbage bags to suffocate. They can't lay eggs, so they are of no economic value to the industry. The female chicks are 'debeaked” which means they have a significant part of their beaks cut off. When they are old enough they are crammed into wire cages and live in a huge building with no windows. Their lives are nonstop misery.

Cramming tens and hundreds of thousands of birds in a closed building and having them live in and breathe their own waste is a recipe for disaster. There will be more. And because these operations are so large, they will want the government (taxpayers) to bail them out when this happens. They will say they are too big to fail. The current system is a problem environmentally, economically and morally. Please do not support factory farms. Don't buy their products.

Lynn Gallagher

Solon