“We have a very important job this summer- to kill these chickens and figure out why they’re dying.”
My supervisor’s frightful words shocked me the first day of my internship at the poultry diagnostic laboratory. I’ve always loved animals, believing that animals’ lives are no different from ours. I never thought I would be killing one, let alone a whole group of them. Despite my ongoing doubts, my supervisor continued explaining my mission. In my head, I understood my supervisor’s words explaining the significance of the dissections. However, in my heart, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Isn’t a chicken’s life still a valuable life? How could I possibly justify taking away …show more content…
The chicken showed a mournful "Are you really going to kill me?" expression as I twisted its neck and legs. Though the chicken fluttered its wings trying to escape, its soul was ultimately taken.
When the first day was over, a question rang loudly through my head: am I doing the right thing? I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t seen any abnormal symptoms, which meant I had only killed healthy chickens. As far as I was concerned, I had just killed them for no reason. When I was forced to repeat the same task the next day, my head was full of more doubts than ever before, and I sincerely needed an answer that could justify my cruel behavior.
After a few days, the reason finally became clear.
While I was dissecting another set of chickens with this ethical war waging inside of my head, my fellow intern detected an abnormality. The gizzards of most of the chickens in the set were empty. This symptom showed that the chickens had died because they were not able to eat due to various diseases. Based on this finding, we suggested that the farmers change the feeding programs and provide their chickens with better ventilation in order to prevent more deaths. I finally understood that killing the chickens was not futile because their sacrifice brought tremendous benefits. They helped prevent the loss of more chickens since we were able to give the farmers a solution for decreasing the mortality rate and also for acquiring a