When my husband and I first got involved in raising our own chickens for both eggs and meat, we did it because we wanted to find ways to cut back on our participation in the food industry. It’s a sad reality that most of us know all about. The food industry is not, in general, good to animals, and it’s all about profit–no matter the costs to the animals.

When you find out about what happens when chickens are processed and the lack of care and respect they receive, it’s hard to imagine that things could get worse, but lo and behold, they’re trying to make it worse on both the chickens and the humans who work in these difficult jobs.

I recently learned that the National Chicken Council, a trade group in the chicken industry, has requested that the United States Department of Agriculture eliminate rules about the speeds for evisceration lines for chickens. Right now, according this piece, the speed limit is 140 birds per minute. The industry wants faster.

But animals rights groups, such as the ASPCA, and people who have worked in the industry say more speed would be bad for both the people working in the factories and the chickens themselves.

If the evisceration lines are made to move more quickly, then the rate at which the birds are killed would have to speed up in order to keep up. What does this mean? Why is this bad?

Well, according to some who have worked in the industry, right now, some chickens are not being properly killed in an effort to rush them into the lines. Some chickens are already not being stunned before they are killed, and, worse, some are not being killed until they are put into the hot water pots that they are put into in order to loosen their feathers.

The argument is that speeding up this process even more is going to mean more torture for the animals, as the factories will run the risk of having even more chickens put into the lines before they are dead.

Apparently, the industry contends this will not happen. They argue that there will be no compromising on food safety or animal safety. But I tend to think that these people who are clearly after profits above all else should shut the cluck up. It’s not like they have a history of telling us the truth. I’m tired of this. I’m so tired of animals being treated as nothing but a means to money.

I’m not a vegetarian. I do eat chicken, but my husband and I make sure our chickens are treated with respect and given a respectful, clean, quick death. I know not everyone can raise and process their own food, but, thankfully, right now there is something everyone can do.

Until December 13, 2017, the USDA is accepting public comments on this proposal from the National Chicken Council to speed up the lines. You can make your voice heard by going here and making a public comment.

The ASPCA has been using the hashtag #slowthecluckdown. Please share this story and/or the link to the public comments site and use that hashtag if you can. There are hundreds of thousands of us who love chickens and know how amazing they are. I think we’ve got to organize.

Maybe commenting on this petition could be just the beginning.