In response to Environmental ignorance (The Daily Astorian, June 8), I would like to commend the writer on her environmental concerns regarding Kentucky Fried Chickens use of throw-away containers. However, she seems to see only the tip of the iceberg. Did you know that KFC kills 850 million chickens annually, and all of them are factory farm raised?

You might think, and your point is? Factory farmed animals are nothing more than an expendable commodity with no greater value than the throw-away paper packaging that the writer found so offensive.

With factory farm chickens, the birds are confined in battery cages, often providing as little as 130 square inches of cage space per bird. This is the equivalent area of the size of a piece of notebook paper. The cages can be stacks upon stacks high, with fecal matter falling on the birds below. The cages are confined to huge sheds, often containing tens of thousands of birds, with the ammonia and fecal stench so strong that workers wear respirators.

With so many birds together disease outbreaks are the norm, so to compensate the birds are pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to keep them alive long enough until they are slaughtered.

Sounds yummy, doesnt it? Ever wonder why kids develop at an earlier age? Could it have anything to do with consuming a lot of food which primarily consists of factory farmed animals?

A steady diet of antibiotics and hormones pumped into the chickens makes them grow faster and put on so much extra weight that the birds can become so top-heavy that they are physically unable to support their own weight, causing legs to break and other physical abnormalities. They are treated as an expendable commodity and not an animal.

Poultry is excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act that is supposed to ease the suffering of animals when they are slaughtered.

If your dog or cat were treated the way chickens and other factory farmed animals are kept, you would go to jail for animal cruelty and neglect.

STACEY McKENNEY

Astoria