How does one combine ethical business practice with animals? While business ethics dictates fair trade; an exchange of equal value, complications arise when the variable of the merchandise is introduced. Have you ever seen the mail orders for chicks and ducklings that seem to become so prevalent around Easter time? Have you ever received such a package? Often there is at least one dead creature, withered and crushed into the straw at the bottom of the box. Once freed, the fragile little birds rush to the water dish and heat lamp… if you had the foresight to provide them. The stronger animals survive given the right care, but the weaker ones drop off, going “gimpy.” There is very little you can do for them as they flop and wobble, unable to fully support their own weight. Hobbling, wings splayed for balance, their eyes retreat behind nictitating membranes. And how do you put a chick out of its misery? Bullets and drugs are worth more than the animal, so you tonk it with a shovel…
Profit for what price? Not very long ago it was human beings being treated in this fashion as the slave ships crossed the Atlantic. Are we any more justified?
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I have had the sad experience of trying to nurse a dying chick back to health with little results. Perhaps if the box were circular there would not be the crushing problem, just to suggest a solution to the many problems involved with the practice. But I do believe the same thing, the process should be rethought and I think that the globalization of our economy has forced us to send chicks without water or heating lamps and with further progress even worse atrocities could happen. Also the strong chicks who survive remind me of zoos in that humans search for the strongest and best representation of an animal to show in its humbled state within the cage.
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