Today's meat chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast, and twice as large as their ancestors. Pushed beyond their biological limits, hundreds of millions of chickens die every year before reaching slaughter weight at 6 weeks of age. The modern broiler is a genetic freak, doomed to all manner of physical and mental ills, all the result of: Ruthless selection for heavier birds.

By nature, chickens are alert and nimble forest-dwellers and foragers who have been forced to subsist in alien bodies and alien environments that manifest human psychic patterns, not theirs. They are not suited to the life imposed on them in order to satisfy human demands in the modern world. Broiler chickens have been forced to grow three and a half times faster than normal chickens through dietary and genetic manipulations for meat production, resulting in painful skeletal and metabolic diseases.

Broiler chickens are the human's poorest victim. The ostrich and emus are the new ones.

The world’s largest flightless bird has inhabited this planet for 50 million years. Ostriches can grow to be 9 ft tall, and to live up to 80 years. They thrive in hot, dry climates. In full gallop ostriches can run at speeds of 40 mph, and can cover 25 ft in a single stride. They are nomads, and have been designed by 60 million years of evolution to roam over vast tracts of grassland and desert. On farms they are deprived from being able to run, let alone run at speed. They cannot explore the huge areas they inherited in Africa, and become highly frustrated and stressed.

Ostriches belong out on the warm plains of Africa, not small wet British paddocks, nor cold Austrian mountains, nor Belgian back yard.

Ostriches and emus are intended for wide open spaces, where their grace and intelligence can be exercised. Their long necks and excellent sight enable them to survey the land for miles in all directions at once. They need to keep moving. Wild ostrich chicks and their parents cover 15 to 2O miles a day. Over 6O percent of an ostrich's daily activity is devoted to walking. Confinement to an acre or less of land devoid of stimulating activity or interest causes these birds to develop leg problems. Like broiler chickens and turkeys, they develop leg problems also as a result of being fed a diet excessively high in protein to force them to grow rapidly for slaughter. The ostrich is an herbivore and the emu, too, is mainly a plant eater. Under intensive farming for meat production, they will be forced to consume meat byproducts and other inappropriate foods. They will become one more dumping ground for agricultural waste products. They will suffer from leg deformities, digestive maladies, reproductive disorders, and transmissible diseases, such as avian influenza, similar to what chickens, turkeys, and ducks endure under similarly unsuitable conditions.

Stress from these conditions raises the bird’s susceptibility to disease. To combat diseases drugs and antibiotics are often used. The levels of toxicity that can result add to the stress these birds must live with.

Diseases of intensification - Infectious diseases and leg problems are emerging, and stress is a major killer too. Self-inflicted injuries occur when the easily frightened ostriches run into fencing, or damage each other, accidentally or through aggression. Much of their suffering is associated with their life in captivity and the deprivation of parental care.

In being raised for meat, the integrity of the birds and their family life will be violated, and they will be subjected to the same mass production methods that are applied to other birds similarly regarded and used, including artificial insemination and incubation, separation of parents and offspring, and other degrading treatment. These long-lived birds will be slaughtered in their infancy as 12 to 15 month old chicks.

The most common way of raising emus (and ostriches) is to collect newlaid eggs and put them in an incubator. This is hazardous work given the wrath of the robbed parents, but losing her eggs prompts the mother to lay more, and a prolific emu hen can lay up to 50 in a season. Chicks are intensively reared. The newly hatched chicks are reared in a shed and subjected to artificial lighting and temperature control.

For their first three months of life ostrich chicks are very delicate, often dying for no apparent reason (the fading chick syndrome). In their natural habitat ostrich chicks are strong and hardy.

Mortalities are between 10-25 percent, mostly between two and four weeks after hatching, and losses up to 17 percent among young birds due to leg problems.

In nature, the choice of mate is mutual. After their courtship, a pair will choose a nesting site and build it together. Once the female has laid the eggs, the male incubates them. He sits on the eggs for the eight weeks until they hatch, living on his fat reserves. He knows when the eggs are close to hatching because the chicks communicate through the shell with a whistling sound. His dedication continues as he raises the chicks, teaching them to forage.

However, Farmers don't like monogamy in their flocks because it means they can't get by with only one or two male 'stud' animals to impregnate all the females.

The Breeding Stock - As with all commercially-reared poultry today, the breeding stock lead unnatural and stressful lives. In the wild, ostriches select their mates carefully, the males indulging in exotic and prolonged dances to attract the chosen female. Both sexes are dedicated parents for nearly a year, after which time the chicks can fend for themselves.

Already, breeding ostriches are being kept in relatively small paddocks of one-quarter to half an acre per pair. When breeding for meat production begins, a male and three females will be given a half-acre paddock, with young growing birds being stocked at 6 - 10 birds per acre.

Just as the poultry industry misleads the public to think that debeaking chickens and turkeys is as painless as trimming one's fingernails, so the ostrich and emu industry would have us believe that plucking feathers is as painless as cutting one's hair. In fact, the feather of a bird is firmly held in a follicle, the wall of which is richly supplied with sensory fibers and nerves in the papilla, pulp, and feather muscles. Even clipping the feathers above the nerve endings pulls on the sensitive skin and muscle tissue to which the feathers are attached. Removing a feather from a bird requires a hard, steady pull.

Ostriches use their wings to cool themselves, moving them slowly backwards and forwards to direct a cooling breeze over their featherless thighs and sides while standing against the wind.

Feather removal experiments on chickens (and other birds such as ducks) cause "marked changes" in the bird's behavior, from an alert, agitated response including jumping, wing- flapping, and "vocalizations" following the initial removals, to periods of crouching immobility with the head drawn into the body and eyes partially or fully closed as the researcher's pulling continues. These reactions exhibit the learned helplessness that develops in birds and other animals subjected to traumatic events that are aversive and that continue regardless of attempts by the victim to reduce or eliminate them.

Ostrich feathers are manually obtained from the living bird by a combination of plucking, clipping, and "quilling." The body feathers of ostriches bred exclusively for feather production in Africa are plucked every seven to ten months. Wing plumes--as many as 5O at a time from the male--are cut about once a year. Plucking refers to pulling the whole feather, plume and quill, straight from the socket by hand. Feathers are plucked from the tail, wing coverts, and chests of adult birds and from the bodies of the 7 to 8 month old, and 14-month old, juvenile birds. The wing plumes of adult birds are clipped off with hedge clippers or pruning shears. The ostrich is restrained in a "plucking box," sometimes wearing a hood to render the bird blind and helpless, while feathers are cut approximately two inches above the socket. Closer cutting causes hemorrhage and feather regeneration damage, as blood vessels and nerves run through the center of the feather stopping near where the feather unfolds.

Quilling is the process of pulling out the quills that are purposely left in the sockets of the bird at the time of clipping. This is done about two months later by hand, or with pliers. Quilling is used to avoid hemorrhage and to control the growth and commercial quality of the wing plumes.

At present, the main product from ostriches is the "hyde," which is used to make cowboy boots, luggage, and accessories, with feathers and meat as byproducts.

The emus, is said to be 95 percent consumable. Products include:

Emu’s oil is likely to be the most profitable part of farming and slaughtering emus. It is increasingly used as an ingredient in cosmetics and medicines, and therapeutic products like rubbing oil for the treatment of arthritis. It is also used in some cosmetics because of its supposedly remarkable ability to penetrate and soften the human skin. Emu’s leather is used for book binding, boots, wallets, belts, luggage and fashion accessories. EGGS - supplied to restaurants or carved (there are three layers of shell - green, blue and white) for the tourist trade; EGGSHELLS and TOENAILS - for jewellery and decorations Ostrich eyes are used in the US in corneal research and for human corneal transplants.

Transportation is very dangerous and stressful. Most injuries are related to the brutal handling and transport. Think about what would happen to a bird standing on two legs if you slam on the breaks. Getting hurt by small openings and sharp edges and being injured and killed from being loaded too tightly. Crowded ostriches will often fight or hurt one another by pecking or stepping on each other. Subjecting these sensitive, easily stressed birds with their long thin necks and legs, and their large, fragile eyes, to transport is cruel.

In addition to their unique problems, the birds will be deprived of food and water, hauled in all kinds of weather, often over long distances, across state lines, and forced to endure the traumatic truck vibrations that have been found to be so stressful to chickens going to slaughter. They will suffer from heat stress, damp weather, and terror.

The industry magazine “ostrich news” suggested the following as slaughter guidelines:

1. The ostrich should be panned up in a large room the evening before slaughter. The lairage room should have the facility to shutter it from light, so it is completely dark.

The light deprivation is designed to subdue the bird. For a creature so dependent on visual stimulation and the company of others of its kind, this is a very cruel practice.

2. The ostrich should be hooded overnight, so as not to stress it prior to slaughter.

Hooding will leave the bird completely disorientated and distressed.

3. The next morning the ostrich should be moved to the slaughter pen to be electrically stunned.
4. The hood should be sacked in water and the feet hobbled 18 inches apart.

This is perhaps the most sadistic part of the slaughter process, this subdued, disoriented bird will be doused with water and have its feet immobilized.

5. An electric sheep stunner should be clamped across the head from side to side. Once stunned, the ostrich should be hoisted upside down and bled to death.

Electrical stunning followed by bleeding to death is one permitted killing method for ostriches. Others are: killing by free bullet, neck dislocation and decapitation; the latter two advised in conjunction with pre-stunning.