Nearly 50 activists from the animal rights association L214 gathered on Thursday morning on the esplanade of the Trocadéro, in Paris, to denounce the intensive chicken farming practices by Le Gaulois. The activists displayed around 44 chicken carcasses from the same farm, starting from the chick stage to their packaging in order to illustrate “44 days of rampant growth,” according to the association.
“With this illustration, we can see that we go from a small 50-gram chick to a 3 kg chicken, so it has multiplied its size by 60 in just six weeks. It illustrates the madness that happens in farms and it tells the extreme suffering of these animals,” said Brigitte Gothière, co-founder of L214.
Through this action, which was attended by the journalist and environmental activist Hugo Clément and the presenter Nagui, the association demands that the brand stop using “ultra-fast growing” genetic strains named Ross 308 and to “commit to banning the worst farming practices.”
“Le Gaulois treats its chickens like objects, it produces them as if they were producing cars,” says Léo Le Ster, campaign manager for L214, who believes that this accelerated growth affects the health of the chickens. “These 44 chickens we see there, they all died of heart attacks, lung problems, various diseases… sometimes, there are even those who are weak, who couldn’t reach the drinkers and feeders and died of hunger or thirst,” he lamented.
In addition to calling on the brand to commit to ending intensive farming, this action is also carried out to draw public attention. “We bring the chickens here to show what it really does, because it’s true that for people who don’t know much about [this subject], it can be very abstract,” explains Pauline Laporte, an employee of the association. “Even if we have been activists for a long time for the animal cause, we do not get used to the horror ultimately,” confides Hélène, also an employee of the association, who is carrying the carcass of a chicken that died after 36 days. “It’s a rather solemn moment, we see people passing by, we see people intrigued and questioning, it’s important to be here.”
