Mother hen Karen Davis of the anti-poultry fringe group United Poultry Concerns, who lives with over 100 chickens and duck “companions,” has said “the extermination of seven billion broiler chickens is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust,” and suggested that September 11 was good for chickens because it resulted in the demise of many meat-eaters, squawks about how poultry is like people in an Asheville Citizen-Times op-ed:
“My hackles rise whenever I hear someone say chickens aren’t smart, because it isn’t true. If you don’t meet chickens at their own eye level, and all they ever see of you are your boots or tennis shoes, you will never know these birds or how interesting and personable they are… chickens are intelligent. If Sarah, a former battery-caged hen, climbed the stairs in the morning to get me downstairs to fix her breakfast after yelling from the bottom step failed to produce results, was she not displaying purposeful adaptive intelligence?
“Or take Karla, who seeks me out when I’m cleaning the chicken houses each day. Suddenly, there she is, with her little face and neck stretched up. I know what she wants, so I lay down my spackling knife, scoop her up and hold her close. With her pretty pink comb, soft white feathers, and muddy balletic feet, Karla is like a lovely flower who just happens to be a bird.”
