Truck full of chickens catches fire

[Catherine]

A truck hauling chickens on a Toronto Highway, caught fire.

There were 8,000 chickens on that truck. That is eight thousand! On one truck! The conditions couldn't have been too good even without the fire.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ch...-1.3068969

They estimate that 3,000 chickens died. I wonder how many were already dead from the horrific transport conditions.

The comments are interesting and disturbing as usual.

The video I saw earlier on my phone showed firemen spraying released chickens as they sprayed the truck. I didn't see much rescuing or any concern for the chickens.
That seems to have come later.(I can't find the earlier video, yet)
Found it!
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/slow-moving-tr...-1.2368209

I found this video disturbing because those white lumps on the road are live chickens. Why are they not rushing in to help them. Later on they unloaded the truck, but there were injured birds in the crushed crates. How long did they suffer or were they simply hauled on another truck to the slaughterhouse to be killed no mater what.

[Tobi]

What a terrible accident.
You are right, in the first (earlier) video I can't see much caring or concern for those chickens going on. Yes the firemen had to make sure the blaze was under control. That was very important, but surely someone else could have been trying to get those survivors out? Being cannoned with water from a fire hose can't have done them much good either.

It is also very sad to realise that even when they were 'safe' and all in new boxes, (in the later video) their ultimate destiny wasn't to be safe and sound at all....but to go to slaughter.

[Catherine]

The whole thing is very sad. One of the comments said it all when they declared that 8,000 chickens on one truck is obscene.

The trucks they ship them in are not very safe or comfortable for the chickens.

The radio broadcasts I heard make a big deal about the traffic on the highway being slowed by the fire. They made no mention or showed any concern for the chickens. Once they are on those trucks people consider them dead and nothing more than food.

We have lost our ability to empathize and feel for what the chickens went through because we don't feel for what they normally go through.

[Tobi]

A lot of animal suffering is because people become hardened, or inured to what they go through. Those things become blind spots.

Many children show they can feel. They have empathy. Then sometimes when they become adults this is gone. Why? I'm not sure but maybe it's because adults are exposed to many hurtful things day after day, on the news, in their lives, etc. They form 'callouses' on their feelings. Chickens going through this become just 'food in transport'.....as if they were sacks of flour or watermelons.

[Catherine]

You may be right about people becoming callous and hardened to things as they grow up. I find many people do not have the imagination to feel for an animal's suffering. Worse many have learned wrongly that animals don't matter. Because they are unimportant it doesn't matter how we treat them. Worse still is the attitude that animals exist solely to meet our needs. When you look at it that way, you can do anything you want to them and it is alright.

When I think of the many issues we have looked at this year, I think this attitude is quite common.