I took a job as a “chicken catcher” for Brian’s Poultry in southern Ontario, Canada on May 12, 2003. It was a horrible experience for my girlfriend [Sally] and me, but it was even worse for the chickens.

A company van picked us up at 6 p.m., and as we climbed inside with other employees who had been hired for the same position, it quickly became obvious that there would be no friends made here. No one was interested in learning our names, and if not for two boys who talked to us in the back of the van, we would not have understood what we would be doing as “catchers” that night. The boys told us that we would feel badly afterward and have trouble breathing but that we would “get used to it.”

We were split into two teams, and as we approached the next barns, one of the workers started yelling, “I get the runts! I get the runts!” When I asked him what he meant, he said that, in order to get a higher weight in the truck, they wanted to load only the big chickens and kill the smaller ones. He explained how he smashed the skulls of the “runts” until they were dead. He was assigned to the other barn, so I did not have to witness this.

…we were required to carry eight chickens at a time…I was trying to be gentle because my heart went out to these poor animals, but I could still feel the chickens’ legs breaking in my hands. Carrying four chickens in each hand puts a lot of pressure on certain chickens, causing their legs to pop out of joint or their bodies to crush under the weight of the other chickens.

Around the loading doors, there were a lot of injured chickens, lingering in pain on the ground. These chickens had either been dropped by the loaders or were left behind in the catching and loading frenzy.

Many of these chickens couldn’t walk properly and therefore, could not move themselves out from under our feet, so they were injured and crushed. In all the barns, including the kosher barn, I witnessed chickens who wandered out into the open being kicked and stepped on by workers, then left to die with damaged legs and broken wings. I also heard numerous callous comments from the workers, such as: “They’re not really animals,” “I hate chickens,” “I just want to kill them,” “Just don’t think about them,” “Just don’t worry about them,” and “Just kick them out of the way.”

…I made eye contact with some of the young chickens, who were so little that they weren’t even clucking yet, just cheeping. It just killed me. They started huddling under me for safety when I knelt down. Some people think that chickens don’t have feelings, but it was perfectly clear how scared these animals were.

I only made it half of one night, but the biggest shock came when I realized that the catchers do this every day and have been doing it for years—some of them for their entire working lives. The brutality that these people inflict on animals shocked me. Ever since that day, my boyfriend and I have sworn off meat. Most people don’t know what happens to animals in the meat industry, but now you know that there is a fate worse then death for these chickens—their journey to slaughter.

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