poults. Detoeing removes the toes up to the skin of the birds' feet, which are of course innervated, thus
causing enormous pain.
household scissors.
dubbing, is acutely painful.
Turkeys used for breeding are detoed and beak-trimmed, and the male turkeys' snoods are
cut off (desnooded). All these "elective surgeries" involve pain, perhaps chronic pain. No
anesthetic is ever given to the birds. These mutilations are crude solutions to the problems
created by modern methods of raising chickens and turkeys. For example, broiler breeder
males have been bred, consciously or unconsciously, for hyper-aggressiveness. They injure
and cause fear in the hens, who cannot escape from these roosters in the breeder houses.
Worse, to keep their weight down, meat-type breeder chickens are given only 40-50 percent
of the amount of food they would normally eat. They are chronically hungry. Their abnormal
behavior, such as compulsive pecking, shows they are obviously suffering" (Duncan,
Farmed Animal Well-Being Conference, June 28-29, 2001 cited in Davis, K. Humane
Treatment of Domestic Livestock 2003).
knife blade or laser.
trimming leads to both acute and chronic pain. The morphological evidence is that the tip of
the beak is richly innervated and has nociceptors or pain receptors. This means that cutting
and heating the beak will lead to acute pain. In addition, it has been shown that as the nerve
fibers in the amputated stump of the beak start to regenerate into the damaged tissue,
neuromas [tumors] form. Neuromas are tiny tangled nerve masses that have been
implicated in phantom limb pain (a type of chronic pain) in human beings. The
neurophysiological evidence is that there are abnormal afferent nerve discharges in fibers
running from the amputated stump for many weeks after beak trimming--long after the
healing process has occurred. This is similar to what happens in human amputees who
suffer from phantom limb pain. The behavioral evidence is that the behavior of beak-trimmed
birds is radically altered for many weeks compared to that which occurs immediately before
the operation and compared to that shown by sham-operated control birds. In particular,
classes of behavior involving the beak, namely feeding, drinking, preening and pecking at
the environment, occur much less frequently, and two behavior patterns, standing idle and
dozing, occur much more frequently. The only reasonable explanation of these changes is
that the birds are suffering from chronic pain" (Duncan, 1993, p. 5 cited in Davis, K. Humane
Treatment of Domestic Livestock 2003).