Poultry industry urged to use euphemisms for hurting animals

From Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sept. 22, 2007:
 

EUREKA SPRINGS — Stop talking about “debeaking” a chicken. Instead, let’s call it “beak conditioning.”


That’s a suggestion from Timothy Cummings, a clinical professor and poultry veterinarian at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., who spoke to poultry producers here Friday.


At a Turkey Meeting sponsored by the Arkansas Poultry Federation, Cummings argued the poultry-slaughter industry must come to terms with the power, and media savvy, of anti-meat campaigners like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.


Words like debeaking, hanging and detoeing used in the poultry industry gives extra fodder to groups that seek its destruction, he said. Cummings offered other suggestions:


The “backup killer” in a poultry plant — the worker who kills birds missed by the automatic killer — should be called “knife operator.” Rather than saying a bird has been “bled” to death, call it “exsanguinated.”