This letter was sent to The Newspaper Editors: Cape Times, The Argus, Daily Mail, Pretoria News, The Star, The Citizen, The Mercury, Die Burger, Natal Witness and Mail & Guardian.

Dear Editor -
           
When Wally pulled through his open-heart surgery, screened live on SABC3 Television on Saturday night, it was as if Nando’s was as much a part of the proceedings as the team of doctors. I personally found the chicken heart-beat that accompanied Nando’s' every appearance during the hours’-long procedure utterly inappropriate. 

Wally’s bad life-style was the reason for his heart condition, yet the message was ‘Eat more chicken; eat more chicken’. 

Not only should Wally be eating a whole lot less chicken in future (and more vegetarian alternatives), but there are other compelling reasons for this apart from health considerations: 

It takes 14 litres of water to convert just one chicken into meat at the abattoir alone. Some 10 million broiler (meat) chickens are slaughtered every week in South Africa. That’s  140 million litres of bloody water draining into the sewage pipes every week - and it doesn't include the water used to irrigate the crops that provide the chickens' food and drinking water to keep them alive for six-weeks of life. As we tighten our belts on all fronts, we cannot disregard the way we pour water down the drain in order to feed our appetites for meat.

Moreover, a trip to any disadvantaged settlement where chicken feet are sold at 50 cents a foot to the poorest of the poor, will reveal that fully one-third of these feet are scorched black with ammonia burns. While alive, the chickens were forced to stand cheek by jowl on filthy ammonia-saturated litter.  Some of these burns ooze pus showing that the chickens experienced the immensely painful condition known as bumblefoot.

That's not all! Up to 90 percent of broiler chickens will display an abnormal gait during their brief lives because their skeletons simply cannot carry the weight of their selectively-bred-to-be-giant bodies. Some will have been unable to walk at all and will have died because of not being able to reach the water nipples.

And although still cheeping the cheep of baby chicks, thousands of these poor obese chickens will die of heart attacks before they reach slaughter-age, which is directly related to their over-fed, under-exercised bodies. How’s that for irony!

Sincerely, 
Louise van der Merwe -   SA Representative: Compassion in World Farming
Editor: Animal Voice
Managing Trustee: The Humane Education Trust 
CEO: Humane Education Publishers