Content warning: This column contains graphic descriptions of the treatment of animals.

Though we often don’t realize it, the food we eat, such as the chicken salad for lunch and the Oreo milkshake for dessert, came from one of the most oppressed groups today: non-human animals.

We don’t like to hear it, but your food felt something. The hours spent in cages too small to breathe, the emotional trauma of having your children stolen from you, the feeling of hanging upside down as a blade opens your neck is real.

In the US alone, 8.5 billion chickens were slaughtered in 2014, according to USA Today. So, what is it like to be a factory-farmed chicken bred to be killed for consumption?

Life for chickens was described as the following by the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals:

You’re either born a male chick or a female chick. Because the male chicks are economically valueless, they are likely going to be tossed onto a conveyor belt that throws them down a macerator. Female chicks typically grow up to be one of two types of chickens: broiler chickens raised for their flesh or laying hens raised for their eggs.

Due to selective breeding and drugs, broiler chickens grow so fast that their own body can’t keep up. Heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling leg deformities are not uncommon. Their body weight may become too much for their legs to hold, immobilizing them and leading them to starvation. You can’t drink if your legs give out when you try to stand.

The home of broiler chickens are large, dark farms stacked with as many other chickens as will fit in order to maximize profit.

Laying hens aren’t any better off. Stuffed into tiny cages smaller than the newspaper you’re reading this on, laying hens are forced to urinate and defecate all over one another. They don’t have room to move. They can’t even spread their wings. Because of the stress-inducing environment, the chickens have parts of their beaks cut off in order to reduce pecking, leading to both acute and chronic pain.

At six to seven weeks, the chickens are ready to be slaughtered. They are hung by their feet in shackles. Upside down, the workers take a blade to slice open their neck before they are placed in feather-removing tanks as they are often scalded to death.

Before we evaluate whether we can treat animals this way, consider their lives from their perspective. Imagine what it is like to be a chicken, the chicken you ate for lunch. See it from their point of view, feeling their pain as they would.

In the same sense that white people must ask how they contribute to racism, how heterosexuals may contribute to homophobia, or how neurotypical people may contribute to discrimination against neurodivergent people, we must do the same.

Are we oppressing animals?

Ian Palacios is a junior English and philosophy major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or impalacios.edu.