# data[].attributes.body
"Switzerland , although not an EU member, has its own Animal Welfare Act that prohibited the use of battery cages systems beginning in 1991."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"Finland will ban all battery cages 2005, seven years earlier than the EU Laying Hen Directive requires."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"Sweden prohibited beak trimming of birds and banned the use of battery cages for laying hens in 1999."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"One of the most important decisions made by the EU has been to eliminate battery cages for hens by the year 2012. Because the EU sets only minimum standards for animal welfare, the Member-States are allowed to exceed the EU standards if they so desire."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"The EU’s Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 recognized that animals are sentient beings (i.e. capable of feeling pain) and required that animal welfare be considered when policies relating to agriculture, transport, and research is formulated or implemented. Since then, the focus of agricultural policy in the EU, according to the Commission of the European Communities, has been “. . . increasingly on quality rather than quantity . . . Traditional price mechanisms do not always allow for important considerations like animal welfare to be properly recognized in the prices paid to producers.”"
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"In comparison to the almost non-existent protection offered to agricultural animals in the United States , many farm animals in Europe and the United Kingdom are afforded significant legal protections. Many European animal welfare laws are based in part on the principles of the “Five Freedoms” first defined in 1979 by the UK Agriculture Ministry’s advisory body, the Farm Animal Welfare Council. These five freedoms require that animals have: freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from pain, injury and discomfort, freedom from discomfort, and freedom to express natural behaviors."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.headline
Legal Protections of Chickens in Europe (where it's better)

# data[].attributes.subject
Legal Protections of Chickens in Europe (where it's better)

# data[].attributes.body
"Although every state in the United States has an animal anti-cruelty law, thirty states specifically exclude farm animals (or fowl), and/or make exceptions for “common,” “normal,” or “customary” animal husbandry practices and eighteen states also exclude animal slaughtered for food. Prosecuting animal cruelty cases under the remaining state laws is difficult because many states require a “willful” or “malicious” state of mind, which is often difficult to prove. When farm animals are involved, only cases of extreme neglect appear to warrant prosecution."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"The Humane Slaughter Act , Animal Welfare Act , and the Twenty-Eight Hour Law all exclude chickens from their protections"
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"Egg-laying chickens are often referred to as cage hens or battery hens because they live their life in a “battery cage.” Typically, each battery cage is a 12-inch by 18-inch wire cage that may hold up to six birds. In a six-bird cage, each bird would have approximately 36 in2 of room."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"It is thought that chickens currently supply up to 25% of the world’s meat supply, and in the United States, over 20 million chickens are slaughtered every 24-hours. Today, 36 percent of all meat consumed in the United States is poultry, and chicken remains the least expensive meat. Over 8.7 billion broiler chickens are killed each year for food, and over 337 million battery-hens are used for laying eggs. "
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"Over 90% of the 10 billion animals used in animal agriculture in the United States each are chickens and most of these chickens are raised using intensive husbandry practices commonly known as “factory farming.” Intensive farming uses less land and protects the animals from the extremes of climate."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"The federal Animal Welfare Act prohibits cockfighting, and in May of 2003, an amendment was added that makes it illegal "to knowingly sell, buy, transport, deliver, or receive a bird in interstate commerce for purposes of participation in a fighting venture, regardless of the law in the destination state." Many cockfighters, however, claim that they are raising the animals as “show birds” and deny that they are raising them for fighting."
https://www.animallaw.info/article/overview-legal-protections-domestic-chicken-united-states-and-europe

# data[].attributes.body
"Because the male chicks of egg-laying breeder hens are unable to lay eggs and are not bred to produce excessive flesh for the meat industry, they are killed. Every year, 200 million of these young birds are ground up alive or tossed into bags to suffocate."
https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/chickens/

# data[].attributes.body
"Birds exploited for their eggs, called “laying hens” by the industry, are crammed together inside wire cages where they don’t even have enough room to spread their wings. Because the hens are crammed so closely together, these normally clean animals are forced to urinate and defecate on one another. The birds have part of their sensitive beaks cut off so that they won’t peck each other out of frustration created by the unnatural confinement. After their bodies are exhausted and their egg production drops, they are shipped to slaughter, generally to be turned into chicken soup or cat or dog food because their flesh is too bruised and battered to be used for much else."
https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/chickens/

# data[].attributes.body
"In the United States, approximately 9 billion chickens are killed for their flesh each year, and 305 million hens are used for their eggs."
https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/chickens/

# data[].attributes.body
"When the water "baths" are set below the level required to kill them, as they often are, the animals (unless they have died from stress and abuse before they're even shackled) are alive, conscious and bleeding to death after their throats are slit, and they enter the scalding tank (scalding hot water for feather removal) still conscious. Many of them flap about and thus miss both the immobilization bath and the automated and manual (human) neck-slicers and are still completely conscious when they are scalded to death."
https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Viewpoints&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&docType=Viewpoint+essay&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAY-MOD1&prodId=OVIC&contentSet=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&searchId=R1&userGroupName=24015&inPS=true

# data[].attributes.body
"At slaughter, chickens are dumped from cages like so many rubber balls and then SNAPPED by their weakened and sometimes broken legs into metal shackles before their heads are passed through an electrically charged water bath that immobilizes them but often does not render them unconscious. The workers who hang the animals must work so quickly (assembly-line style) that animals are frequently injured."
https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Viewpoints&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&docType=Viewpoint+essay&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAY-MOD1&prodId=OVIC&contentSet=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&searchId=R1&userGroupName=24015&inPS=true

# data[].attributes.body
"Chickens today are typically crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds, each chicken with less living space than a standard sheet of paper. Modern chickens' upper bodies grow six to seven times as fast as they used to—they are fed drugs and are genetically bred to grow so large and so quickly that their legs, lungs, and hearts often can't keep up. Many of these animals, whose lives are miserable from birth, suffer lung collapse, heart failure, and crippling leg deformities."
https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Viewpoints&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&docType=Viewpoint+essay&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAY-MOD1&prodId=OVIC&contentSet=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&searchId=R1&userGroupName=24015&inPS=true

# data[].attributes.body
"In May of 2001, KFC's parent company, Yum Brands, Inc. assured PETA that it intended to "raise the bar" on animal welfare; yet, to date, KFC has done nothing to address some of the most egregious animal cruelty in the chicken industry"
https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Viewpoints&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&docType=Viewpoint+essay&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAY-MOD1&prodId=OVIC&contentSet=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&searchId=R1&userGroupName=24015&inPS=true

# data[].attributes.body
"The more than 700 million chickens raised each year for KFC aren't able to do any of these things. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste; they are given barely even room to move (each bird lives in the amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of paper). They routinely suffer broken bones from being bred to be top heavy, from callous handling (workers roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them into crates) and from being shackled upside down at slaughterhouses. Chickens are often still fully conscious as their throats are cut or when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water to remove their feathers. When they're killed, chickens are still babies, not yet two months old, out of a natural life span of 10-15 years."
https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Viewpoints&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&docType=Viewpoint+essay&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAY-MOD1&prodId=OVIC&contentSet=GALE%7CEJ3010344213&searchId=R1&userGroupName=24015&inPS=true

# data[].attributes.body
"To produce the world's 400 million annual doses, cultured flu strains are injected into fertilised eggs, a nutrient-rich and otherwise sterile environment in which the virus quickly multiplies. The virus-laden fluid is harvested, and the virus killed or weakened, with one egg equalling approximately one vaccine [...] If the chicken were to disappear, one flu season could kill 50,000 people in the US alone"
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"Cows convert food into meat far less efficiently than chickens, so even if we turned entirely to intensively raised grain-fed cattle we'd need to provide them with eight times as much feed to get the same amount of meat. Given that growing food for livestock already takes up around a third of the arable land on Earth, there might not be room.

What about pigs? We would need to at least double the number from 1 to more than 2 billion to take care of the meat shortfall, and more of the planet would need to become farmland since pigs require almost 14 per cent more feed than chickens to produce a kilogram of meat."
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"The red jungle fowl, which was domesticated at least 4000 years ago, bequeathed the chicken a genome forged by a wide range of environments, from Himalayan foothills to Sumatran jungles. Along the way, the domestic chicken may have also picked up genes from other jungle fowl subspecies, including the Indian grey jungle fowl. "What is remarkable about the chicken is its genetic diversity," says Hanotte."
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"When poultry prices tripled in Iran recently, the nation's police chief warned television producers not to broadcast images of people eating chicken to avoid inciting violence. Across the Persian Gulf in Saudi Arabia, chicken feed is subsidised to keep meat prices low and a potentially restive population quiet."
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"Mexicans eat more eggs than anyone else -- about 330 each year, on average -- and when egg prices shot up in Mexico City in 2012 following the culling of millions of sick birds, demonstrators took to the streets in what was dubbed 'The Great Egg Crisis.'"
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"Chicken is poised to surpass pork -- the traditional Chinese favourite -- as the world's most popular meat by 2020"
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"As recently as 1950, Americans ate twice as much red meat as chicken. Today that situation is reversed. The chicken's rise began after the second world war, when US poultry breeders developed a bird for mass production that grew bigger breast muscles, required less feed, took far less time to mature, and produced tender meat that could be carved almost like a steak."
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.body
"Humans gobble down almost 100 million tonnes of chicken meat and over 1 trillion eggs annually. On a single day this year, Super Bowl Sunday, Americans ate an estimated 1.25 billion chicken wings."
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=1035b911-06e6-491b-a04b-3b13c1b65823%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101696215&db=sch

# data[].attributes.headline
Background on role of chickens in today's society

# data[].attributes.subject
Background on role of chickens in today's society

# data[].attributes.body
"In addition, heat stress has been shown to cause a significant reduction of the weight of the eggs (-3.24%), egg shell thickness (-1.2%), egg shell weight (-9.93%), and the percentage of eggshell (-0.66%). This report was supported by research of who also observed a
decrease in egg production, egg weight and egg shell thickness in laying hens experiencing heat stress."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/265d/d9c884672d35947e27945ed05687ea124dd1.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
"Another study also found that heat stress causes a decrease in the production performance, as well as reducing the thickness of the egg shell, and an increase in damage to eggs."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/265d/d9c884672d35947e27945ed05687ea124dd1.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
"In a recent study, periods of heat stress for 12 days led to a decrease in daily feed intake as much as 28.58 g/ head, and a 28.8% drop in egg production. Reference reported a 31.6% reduction in feed conversion, egg production by 36.4%, and 3.41% by weight of the egg laying hens experiencing heat stress."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/265d/d9c884672d35947e27945ed05687ea124dd1.pdf