Regarding "Poultry project yields life lessons" by Terry Smith, Nov. 11:
Allow me to introduce myself. I taught English for 12 years at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. Before that, I was a juvenile probation officer in Baltimore for five years. Since 1990, I have run United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes compassion for chickens and other domestic fowl.
As an educator, I'm appalled that The Community School encouraged eighth-grade students to slaughter chickens as a classroom exercise—and in student-made killing cones.
Immobilization in the killing cones added to the terrible death the chickens endured. In excruciating pain, the birds could not even thrash violently as they otherwise would have, giving the students a stronger taste of the suffering they caused these poor birds. Throat-cutting is extremely painful. Chickens have the same neurophysiological pain receptors in the neck and throat as humans do. They have the same panic responses, so forget "humane."
Then there are these questions: Which neck vessels did the eighth-graders cut with their knives, and how did they know—if they did know—which vessels they were cutting? What did, or do, these students (or their teachers) know about the function of the carotid arteries versus the jugular veins in terms of the time it takes for a chicken to lose consciousness and eventually die? Twenty seconds is an eternity dying in agony, but it takes a chicken longer than 20 seconds to die by the knife, even when the killer knows what he or she is doing.
This classroom chicken-killing exercise is not only animal abuse but child abuse. Students were encouraged by their teachers to betray the birds who trusted them. Clearly, there is something amiss in need of correction at The Community School. I doubt this matter will "go away" as conveniently as the chickens disappeared into the rhetoric of a banquet.
Karen Davis
President
United Poultry Concerns
Machipongo, Virg.
