By John Di Leonardo
Just weeks before Easter – a Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ – Petco – one of America’s largest animal retailers – began selling chicks at five suburban locations, including one on Long Island, contributing to the epidemic of fowl abandonment when cute, fuzzy Easter props are dumped to local parks when they’re too big for their Easter baskets.
What’s even worse is that Petco is sourcing the baby birds from Murray McMurray Hatchery, a factory farm that admits to gassing thousands of male chicks annually simply because they can’t lay eggs and ships millions of day-old chicks without food and water via the United States Postal Service every year. Countless 1-Star Google reviews about baby birds arriving dead as well as my organization Humane Long Island’s own experience with frantic calls from postal workers about dead and dying baby birds being crushed, getting lost in the mail, or being mailed to incorrect addresses show that Murray McMurray’s standards for animal care are as deplorable as other Petco supplier mills where animals have been found frozen alive, crudely gassed, and neglected.
Petco knows that animal mills are cruel and that Easter animals are often abandoned after the holiday as it recommitted to an "adoption only" policy regarding rabbits just last year for this very same reason, so why would it begin selling chicks? It appears that the retail chain is simply trying to cash in on the next pandemic.
The price of eggs is soaring as an avian influenza pandemic is looming, with a mortality rate one hundred times that of COVID-19. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has already killed 170,000,000 chickens, ducks, and other species of poultry, but factory farms like Murray McMurray are part of the problem, not the solution. Keeping thousands of birds in filthy, overcrowded conditions breeds disease and Murray McMurray is not an exception, having tested for highly pathogenic avian influenza in 2022. By partnering with factory farms like Murray McMurray, Petco is gambling with people’s lives and potentially brokering disease around the country.
As noted in The New York Post, “Properly caring for the birds is expensive. An expert bird vet could run owners up to $1,000 or more for one visit, and the installation and maintenance of a proper coop could add thousands more to a bird lover’s budget.” Since chicks won’t lay their first egg until they’re six months old, many prospective suburban flock owners will surrender their birds to overburdened rescues like ours or be turned in by their neighbor for an illegal rooster long before they ever see any return on their investment.
For this week’s Anuvrat – or small vow, I invite you to reflect on three of the Mahavratas – or central vows of Jainism: ahimsa (non-violence), Aparigraha (non-attachment), and Asteya (not stealing) and remember that chicks are not ours to exploit for eggs, pets, or any other reason. Join me in urging Petco to stop selling chicks by politely contacting Petco CEO Joel Anderson at [email protected] and [email protected]. Then sign our petition at Change.org/StopPetcoChickSales.
John Di Leonardo is the founding director of Humane Long Island. He was previously the Senior Manager of Grassroots Campaigns and Animals in Entertainment Campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He has a Master's degree in Anthrozoology from Canisius College. He also earned a graduate certificate in Jain Studies from the International School of Jain Studies (ISJS) in India. John can be reached at [email protected].
