This is the kind of story that shocks you by not being reported more widely. I did notice it over the weekend, but didn't read the piece until it was e-mailed to me by frequent tipper Joellen Secondo of Massachusetts. I'm sure glad she prompted me to read the article.
Let me start with a brief bit of background. It is very disturbing to me that this could happen after incidents led Northwest in 2001 to declare it would no longer carry chicks:
...in early September, Northwest Airlines kicked the chicks out from under its wings, arguing that too many of them failed to survive the voyage and that the fees were too low to cover the special care chicks require. Technically, Northwest said it no longer would accept baby chickens as mail, only as cargo, for which it charges three times as much.Northwest actually fought for humane treatment of the chicks, requesting the right to refuse any animal shipment "that in the sole opinion of the carrier cannot be transported in a safe and humane manner," but the U.S. Postal Service and poultry industry balked at Northwest's attempt at doing the right thing, and Congress voted to force Northwest to carry the chicks at mail rates instead of cargo rates.
Flash forward to July 2006, as record-breaking temperatures are killing people and animals alike, and Northwest is now part of a chain of events resulting in the death of thousands of turkey chicks:
In one case, according to the [Peninsula Humane Society], more than 9,000 of the birds were crammed onto a Northwest Airlines flight, on which they died from suffocation, overheating and dehydration.Poultry get about zero protection from the government, so I don't see this suit being very fruitful on that end, but I do hope that the story generates publicity, in order that turkey eaters might know what their dietary habits are supporting and perhaps think about eating something else for a change, especially if they make it all the way through to the end of the story, where the story gets even more detailed in its description of the failures leading to thousands of deaths of innocent baby chicks this month, including another couple of incidents involving Northwest, like this one:
The society intends to press for animal cruelty charges against Northwest, said shelter spokesman Scott Delucchi.
[Hybrid Turkeys, a commercial breeder in Canada] shipped 9,360 chicks to San Francisco, this time via three Air Canada flights. When one of the planes malfunctioned and made a pit stop in Las Vegas, the chicks were unloaded in 108-degree heat. The humane society says they sweltered for hours before being loaded onto an America West flight to San Francisco.While you, me, and most feeling people are rightly disturbed by something like this, tossing live animals into the trash is a common practice in animal agriculture.
[snip]
Though most of the Air Canada shipments made it to Fresno, 2,240 dying or dead chicks were left at the San Francisco airport. Delucchi said Northwest, which handles Air Canada's baggage, tossed nearly all of them in the trash compactor.
This all comes back to the need to protect animals from being treated as purely commodities, but rather as sentient beings that deserve some basic rights that will ensure they are not discarded like yesterday's news. Even if animal agriculture must continue for the time being, it has to accept the responsibility for caring for all of its charges as if they were somebody's baby... because they are.
