More than 10 million chickens are estimated to have been smothered by a foam, similar to fire-fighting foam, in slaughterhouses around the world. A similar cull is occurring for other animals, including gassing, shooting, anaesthetic overdose, or ‘blunt force trauma’ simply because the slaughterhouses (where these animals would have been ruthlessly killed for human consumption anyway) are facing their own self-made crisss throughout this pandemic. 
In recent weeks, we’ve learned that huge numbers of meat processing plants have been infected with Covid-19 — and reports suggest this occurred because meat companies failed to protect its employees and pressured them to work even while sick. As a result, many slaughterhouses across the world have been forced to shut down. The owners of these slaughterhouses are described as ‘devastated’ because the closures have meant that animals cannot now be killed for food, and must instead be killed simply because there are too many. 
Farmers are making a business decision to kill countless healthy animals — by running them through a woodchipper, bashing their heads, or suffocating them. This week, one farmer at a prominent American slaughterhouse appeared on NBC news, in tears — and I watched with both fascination, outrage and anger. While he sobbed to the reports on how he was left with no choice but to shoot animals in the head, or suffocate hens… I want to be very clear: these tears were not because of the loss of animal life in this inhumane slaughterhouse. The outrage and so-called ‘devastation’ from farmers isn’t because they are having to kill innocent animals. No no, it’s because the animals aren’t being killed for profit. 
This selective outrage is something that needs to be called out. Slaughterhouses are inhumane with, or without a pandemic. Whether the animals are slaughtered for profit, or not, — they are still slaughtered, and that’s worth our outrage every day of the year. 
Meat-eaters have come to terms with the inevitability of the production process: We all know where it ends.
According to researchers at the University of Missouri’s Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute, who predict this year’s per-capita meat consumption will fall for the first time since 2014 – a positive trend, because meat production has got out of control. 
When you look at the statistics from‘Our World in Data’ global meat production has ‘increased rapidly’ over the past 50 years and total production has more than quadrupled since 1961. In 2018, an estimated 69 billion chickens; 656 million turkeys; 574 million sheep; 479 million goats; and 302 million cattle were killed for meat production. If animals are now being shot, gassed, or suffocated because there is simply too much supply for a weaker demand — we must have change. 
The animals we slaughter for food are extremely intelligent and sensitive creatures, and the way in which we treat them, regardless of whether the meat is factory farmed, free range or organic, is abhorrently cruel. From stealing their babies from them at birth to keeping them locked in confinement and denying them their natural behaviours, our actions cause animals immense emotional pain and suffering.
We find it so difficult to overcome traditional ideas and ways of thinking, that we very rarely stop to question the fundamental ethics and underlying morality of slaughtering animals for food. That’s why these farmers are appearing on our screens, so devastated that they are having to shoot animals with guns, without realising that if there was no pandemic – these animals would still end up dead anyway, but for a profit. 
We need more emphasis on just because something has been done a certain way for thousands of years, doesn’t make it automatically right.


* The author is an expert in vegan wellbeing and health. Instagram handle: @Ghanim92