This isn’t a good thing.
Each year, the National Chicken Council announces how many chicken wings will be consumed during the Super Bowl through its annual Chicken Wing Report.
In 2024: 1.45 billion (yes, with a B) wings will be consumed while professional athletes run up and down the field and Swifties enjoy glimpses of Taylor in the stands.
Given that each chicken has two wings, the amount of birds slaughtered just for Sunday’s big game is a staggering seven hundred twenty-five million. America slaughters over 9 billion chickens for food each year, meaning almost a tenth of all chickens consumed annually will happen during a few hours.
This isn’t something we should be proud of. Chickens are not only sentient beings with their own wants and needs, they’re also one of the most abused animals on the planet. Most of them are farmed industrially—meaning their entire lives are filled with misery and suffering on factory farms.
To make matters worse, there isn’t a single federal law protecting chickens from abuse. While there aren’t currently any federal laws protecting animals during their lives at factory farms, the law that’s supposed to protect animals at slaughterhouses, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, doesn’t extend to birds, leaving chickens with virtually no protection from blatant cruelty.
You have more power than you think to protect chickens from enduring a lifetime of suffering.
Help improve the lives of chickens by urging your federal legislators to fund farmers, not factories, and support the PLANT Act’s inclusion in the 2023 Farm Bill to promote a sustainable, innovative, and prosperous plant-based food industry and support the farmers who grow crops.
That’s not all you can do to help chickens and other farmed animals raised for food. By eliminating or eating fewer animal products overall, you can help put an end to some of the cruelest factory farming practices, such as extreme confinement, the overuse of antibiotics, and brutal mutilations.
Need some animal-friendly recipes while watching “the guy on the Chiefs” this Sunday? We got you covered with these 15 plant-based recipes to enjoy during the Big Game.