PETA Gets Live-Animal Displays Banned from Education Shows

After coming across a live-animal display at a TSL Education exhibition, PETA wrote to the executive chair asking him to implement a policy against this kind of stallholder. Our main concern was chick-hatching projects, which are worryingly sneaking into classroom programs more and more.

Children are no substitute for mother hens and many chicks grow sick and deformed because their needs are not met during incubation and after hatching. In a letter to TSL, PETA’s managing director, Ingrid Newkirk, explained that a chick’s organs can stick to the sides of the shell if the egg is not rotated properly. Also, if the school’s heat is turned off for the weekend, embryos can become crippled and may die in the shell. And is it really fair to allow chicks to hatch over the weekend when no-one is around to care for them? No, actually it’s really irresponsible.

Then you’ve got the problem of what to do with the ‘projects’ when they’re hatched. Most of these chicks end up being killed, disposed of at poultry markets or even fed to reptiles.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. We had a friendly letter back from the nice man at TSL Education, who promised to never allow organisations like this to exhibit at their events again – yay!