Imagine a chicken. Picture her downy white feathers and small, intense eyes. Maybe she’s sitting on a nest, softly clucking. Perhaps she’s scratching in the dirt, a quaint red barn in silhouette behind her. Cows graze contentedly nearby; a pig snuffles in the mud. It’s an idyllic vision, familiar...
You don’t forget the images: the olive ridley sea turtle, a plastic straw lodged in his nose. The Rubenesque sea lion, neck cinched tight by a thick plastic packing strap. The Cuvier’s beaked whale, stomach split open to reveal more than 80 pounds of plastic waste—snack bags, rope, rice sacks...
In 2019, Sara Shields, in southern India for workshops with Humane Society International colleagues, drove into the countryside near Bangalore to visit industrial chicken operations. At the first farm she stopped at, she saw hundreds of white-feathered birds in long open-sided barns with burlap...
