19 Nov 2010
Dear Mr. Errebo, Mr. Isbell, and Ms. Mortimer:
Columbine, Virginia Tech and similar events occur with increasing
frequency throughout the USA.
It seems that almost every week there is a
story of one of the following: alienated students opening fire on their
class mates, disgruntled individuals hunt down strangers in a mall or
co-workers who have 'wronged' them, an angry family member kills his wife
and children, the shooting of a doctor in a church, bullying which drives
young vulnerable individuals to commit suicide and increasing abuse of
animals by young people sheerly for their enjoyment .
And we wonder why.
Often mention is made of the proliferation of guns. It is not the
availability of weapons, but of a mind-set fostered by religious beliefs
which do not honor the sanctity of life, that has created such violence.
When religions piously promote the dominion of man over the animals and with
it the right to abuse and slaughter them for human need, they set in place a
mechanism for trivializing violence, whether it is carried out on animals,
on those humans one deems as 'less than' or in retaliation for a perceived
wrong. It is time to consider whether the Christian concept of dominion has
outlived it's usefulness in a world so filled with violence.
The United Poultry Concerns alert detailing the story of how Chicklett
came to be saved is a case in point of how the violence, which is so common
place in our society today, is reinforced. The courage and compassion of
Whitney Hillman is remarkable in one so young. Unfortunately for the vast
majority of her peers, compassion has already been squelched long before
they reach their teen years, both by religious teachings which allow for the
slaughter of animals and the fervor with which this violence is endorsed by
mainstream secular institutions, such as the media. Information in the alert
indicates sadism and cruelty both to the chickens and to the young people
Nate Hamilton is entrusted to teach. Even if he had been serene, calm,
detached, the act of teaching children to kill is wrong. It is a form of
child abuse, as noted by the reaction of the students. Some cover their
horror with bravado, others are more open about their feelings and are
sickened. The message delivered by the callous attitude of Nate Hamilton is
that it is 'fun' to kill and we can kill with impunity those who are weaker
than us. Is this the message we should be sending to our children in a
culture of ever escalating violence? The true teacher in this story is
Whitney Hillman. Would that those who had doubts about participating will
take their cue from this brave and compassionate young woman.
The greater issue is not the delight of the teacher in slaughtering
harmless living beings, but rather that the school was inflicting a
perception of reality endorsed by the judeo.christian.islamic religious
tradition: man has the god given right to ab(use) and slaughter animals for
human benefit. The only reality being taught by this exercise is that
violence is 'fun' and that the taking of a life is inconsequential. In the
words of anthropologist Margaret Mead:
"No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can
expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded" Margaret
Mead
Exercises which force students to take the lives of animals as a lesson
in reality fail to question the nature of the reality they are enforcing. A
reality that encourages violence towards others, serves only to reinforce
and escalate more of the same. A reality based on compassion and
non-violence is beneficial to both animals and young people who are forming
a moral foundation for their adult lives. There is much to be learned from a
view of 'reality' which honors and respects the lives of ALL beings.
There was a similar case in Great Britain. Marcus, a young lamb, was
slaughtered as a lesson in 'reality'. Marcus had only young school children,
to defend him, whose sense of compassion was more highly evolved than that
of their head mistress, Andrea Charman. Their hearts were broken as they had
hand raised Marcus and cared for him. They will learn with time that the
views of a predominantly Christian nation do not allow for compassion to
animals. They will also assimilate the message that despite the love and
affection one may have for another living being, it is appropriate to kill
this being for your own gratification. They did not learn, what the head
mistress, termed 'reality'. Instead they learned the Christian view of
reality, that there is nothing wrong with killing a cherished friend for
your own benefit.
When we teach children to kill a living being, viewed as lesser, we are
sowing the seeds of future acts of violence both to humans and animals. We
are teaching them a view of 'reality' that often leads to future acts of
gratuitous violence. We are in effect teaching them that life is NOT sacred
and that one may kill for any number of reasons, from anger, to
gratification, to revenge.
In India, where the jain/hindu religious tradition grants unconditional
compassion to ALL living beings, dissection is banned for high school
students in every state, so that they do not become traumatized by and
acclimated to violence.
It is irresponsible and cruel to teach children to kill.
Eventually, Andrea Charman was forced to resign her position as head
mistress, because her actions were deemed brutally inappropriate. One hopes
that Nate Hamilton will also lose his position, as he has shown that he is
not morally fit to teach young people the lessons needed to be responsible
and caring adults.
Ruth Eisenbud
Concordia High School Teacher Bullies Students to Kill Chickens
One Bold Student Said No! She Stole Her Chicken Chicklett to Safety
On October 11, 2010, students at Concordia High School in Concordia, Kansas
slaughtered forty 6-week old chickens they had raised, driven by their
teacher, Nate Hamilton. One student � Whitney Hillman � refused to comply
with Hamilton�s brutal demands and machismo. She absconded with her chicken,
Chicklett, on the day assigned for his death. Her mother, Kristina Frost,
totally supported her daughter�s decisions.
To become friends with Chicklett Chicken-Hillman on Facebook, click on
www.facebook.com/chicklett.chickenhillman
UPC President
Karen Davis�s Letter to school administrators is followed by Whitney
Hillman�s brave and impassioned letter to her teacher and principal,
explaining her refusal to slaughter Chicklett and instead to rescue him from
the �blood, gore and violence� of the slaughter. Her story has been covered
by the Concordia Blade Empire and the Salina Journal.
www.bladeempire.com/news/chs-student-cries-fowl-over-project
www.salina.com/news/story/chicklett
UPC�s Open Letter to Concordia High School Administrators:
Gregg Errebo, Principal
Corey Isbell, Assistant Principal
Unified
School District 333
Concordia Junior/Senior High School
436 W. 10th
Street
Concordia, KS 66901
Via Email:
gregg.errebo@usd333.com ,
corey.isbell@usd333.com
Bev Mortimer, School Superintendent
Unified School District 333
Board of Education
217 W. 7th Street
Concordia, KS 66901
Via
Email: bev.mortimer@usd333.com
Dear Mr. Errebo, Mr. Isbell, and Ms. Mortimer:
My letter
concerns the chicken project that was conducted at Concordia High School in
September-October, 2010.
Our office first learned of this project on
October 17th when we received an email from Kristina Frost, the mother of
the sixteen-year-old student, Whitney Hillman, who refused to slaughter her
chicken, Chicklett, choosing instead to save him from being killed in Nate
Hamilton�s Animal Science and Food Production Class on October 11, 2010.
Having reviewed the material provided to United Poultry Concerns,
including Whitney Hillman�s letter of October 11, in which she set forth her
experience of the project that concluded in the killing of approximately
forty �broiler� chickens on school property, I will summarize as follows:
The chickens were starved from Thursday afternoon until the Monday
slaughter. The teacher indicated that this is needed and normal.
[Clarification: No it isn�t. Standard industry feed withdrawal is
approximately 8 hours before slaughter, according to Commercial Chicken Meat
and Egg Production, 5th edition, 2002, pp. 860-861.] According to several
students who attended the slaughtering, the chickens� legs were wired
together. The chickens were held over buckets. The students were handed
knives, given a brief instruction on what to do, and told to do it quickly.
The chickens were cut on or around the neck and hung over the buckets to
bleed out. One student said that the chickens flapped their wings and
struggled, and so the cutting was hesitant. Another student described how
their chicken suffered and bled for over three minutes before finally dying.
Students went back to other classes with blood on their clothes and some had
blood on their foreheads and faces. Some students were distressed by a male
student playing with a dead chicken�s head.
According to the
information, a group of high school students � mostly juniors, some
sophomores and some seniors � were handed knives and told to cut the throats
of the chickens who, in common with other avian species, have been shown to
have the same neurophysiological responses to pain and suffering, including
panic and fear, as mammals, including humans. There is no indication that
these students had been educated about the neurophysiology of chickens or
that they possessed the ability to locate precisely, or at all, the carotid
arteries which carry oxygenated blood to the brain and thus retain
consciousness during the slaughter process.
Instead of showing
compassion, knowledge or care, Mr. Hamilton and School Superintendent Bev
Mortimer have sought to justify the slaughter as a way of making the origin
of food �real� for students, all the while using a glib, conventionalized
terminology designed to disguise the reality of killing and of being killed:
�processing,� �dispatching,� etc. In fact, Mr. Hamilton does not come across
as a mature, sensitive adult but as a macho, pitiless and bullying person
toward both the birds and the students. He talked like a silly teenager
about his �neat project,� his �cool project.� He seemed poorly informed, as
when he said the chickens �grow faster than their muscles develop� whereas
it�s the other way around: their muscles have been genetically manipulated
to grow faster than they do.
As for the events leading up to the
slaughter on October 11, Whitney Hillman says in her letter that although
the students were told at the beginning of the semester that they would be
raising and slaughtering chickens, funding for the project was considered
unlikely and therefore she wasn�t very concerned; but then all of a sudden,
the chickens were there, and the students were told to pick a chick to raise
and to color the feathers of their chicken with permanent markers, and when
Wendy said no, she could recognize her own chicken without coloring him,
�Mr. Hamilton made me color mine anyway.�
According to Whitney and
her mother, whereas parental permission slips are required for field trips
and violent movies, when it came to having students kill animals with knives
and watch them suffer and die, �we were never asked to fill out a permission
slip.�
To date, the person at Concordia High School who comes across
honorably in this episode is Whitney Hillman. By articulating her position
skillfully and compassionately, by taking responsibility for her actions and
acting in a way that she knew would bring punishment, Ms. Hillman
exemplifies the best spirit of the school. As a professional educator and
former classroom teacher and juvenile probation officer, I know that
sensitive students can be bullied into compliance by teachers, parents and
other adult figures holding power and threats over them.
Some students refused to photograph the slaughter as they were told to
do, or to watch. Several girls verbally objected to the act of slaughtering.
They said �I�m not doing this!� He [Nate Hamilton] got after them with
verbal warnings to get busy and do something. One girl told me [Kristina
Frost] that she chose to do the bagging because it was the least disturbing
of their choices. Several girls were seen sadly petting their chickens prior
to having to kill them. Mr. Hamilton himself told me on the phone that he
saw that occur and, in his words, �but she knew what she had to do so it was
ok.�
No, it was not okay. It was wrong. The cruelty to the chickens,
including meanly tying their poor helpless legs together with WIRE, was
replicated in Hamilton�s intimidation of his students and in his attitude
that making his students turn against the birds who had trusted them didn�t
matter.
We understand that the chicken killing project was a pilot
program and that Hamilton is considering a fish or pig killing exercise next
year. This plan should be rejected. If he wishes to show his students what
animals go through to become food, he can avail himself of the Internet,
including the videos and other documents at www.upc-online.org/slaughter/.
In addition, he can encourage his students to learn more about
vegetarianism, and he can direct his students to books and articles that
discuss how intelligent, sensitive, and emotional chickens, turkeys, pigs,
fish and other animals are increasingly known to be.
In conclusion I
wish to observe that not all teaching requires or allows a �hands-on�
approach to learning. For example, teachers cannot do a project based on the
idea that the only �real� way for students to learn about drugs is to
conduct experimental �hands on� student drug-abuse classes. Nor can a
teacher conduct a real-life miniature warzone claiming that only in this way
can students �really� learn the truth about war. Nor could geography or
history be taught if it were believed that the only way for students to
learn about the earth and the past is to personally visit every part of the
earth and every moment of the past. The idea that students need to kill
animals in order to learn where their food comes from is false and can only
be asserted uncritically in a social climate that denies other species the
respect and protection they deserve.
Nate Hamilton�s behavior, including
his language, represents an educational nadir, just as Whitney Hillman�s
behavior, including her language, is a high point. She said, �My chicken has
become a loved one.� And: �I will not apologize for what I have done. I will
not regret it, and I would definitely do it again if I had to.� A society
that recognizes the greatness of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and other
fearless moral leaders of the past must cherish Whitney Hillman. It is easy
to venerate pioneers of the past. Whitney Hillman is in the present, and she
is definitely the hope of the future.
Thank you for your attention.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Karen Davis, PhD,
President
United Poultry Concerns
12325 Seaside Road, PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405
Phone: 757-678-7875
Fax: 757-678-5070
Email: Karen@upc-online.org
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that addresses
the treatment of domestic fowl in food production, science, education,
entertainment, and human companionship situations, and promotes the
compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. www.upc-online.org
Whitney Hillman�s Letter to Concordia High School Administrators, October
11, 2010:
Dear UPC,
I saw your group online and I am writing
to request your help in addressing what went on at my daughter's school
regarding the slaughtering of over 40 chickens:
My daughter rescued
her chicken from her high school classroom and ran away from school with him
on 10/11/2010. The chicken was one of over 40 chickens scheduled to have
their throats cut that day by high schoolers as part of a classroom pilot
program to "teach" kids where their food comes from. NO preparation for the
teens or families, no permission slips and no warnings at class sign-up were
given; it was too late to transfer classes by the time the chicks arrived in
the class. My daughter refused to be a part of the slaughter and could not
leave her chicken behind, so she chicken-napped him and ran away from the
school leaving a letter behind. I am including the detailed article that ran
in our local paper 10/15/2010 and my daughter's original essay to her
teacher and the principal.
My daughter's letter:
Whitney Hillman
10/11/2010
Chicklett
At the beginning of
the semester we were told we were going to be buying baby chicks, raising
them for 5-7 weeks, and then slaughtering them. When we were told this is
was too late to transfer classes. Assuming we didn�t have enough funding for
the project I wasn�t too concerned. Then all of a sudden we have boxes
filled with baby chickens, and we were told to pick our own chicken.
Obviously, I think this is wrong in many ways, and my intent in this letter
is to explain why I did what I did. I believe this is wrong because we were
never asked to fill out a permission slip, we were told to raise our own
chickens, and I believe there should have been a choice.
Permission
slips are widely used within school systems, mainly for field trips and
movies. History classes are big on this because we watch rated R movies.
These movies are not rated R because of their sexual content, nudity, or
language, but rather, because of their blood, gore, and violence. What is
involved in chicken slaughtering? Blood, gore, and violence. So I think
that�s a pretty good reason for a permission slip. Also, some parents might
object to this all together! Maybe they don�t want their children to have to
experience this, or perhaps they are a vegetarian family, and don�t believe
in the slaughtering of animals for food. Whatever the reason, like it or
not, parents do have a say!
When the word raise is brought to mind,
what do you think of? When I hear the word �raise,� I think of taking care
of something or someone because they cannot do it on their own. This
involves animals; they cannot raise themselves, especially not in a cage.
So, we chose our chickens, gave our chickens names, and found ways to
remember which chicken belonged to each person. While everyone else was
covering their chickens in permanent marker, I was looking at my chicken�s
color. My chicken had an orange head instead of yellow, which is what all
the other chickens had in my group. So I could distinctly tell the
difference, but Mr. Hamilton made me color mine anyway. I didn�t want to
color my chicken with a permanent marker because it felt wrong; if coloring
the chicken made me feel bad, how do you imagine killing it would make me
feel? So, instead of coloring my chicken, I put a purple dot on his foot; it
still felt wrong, but it was a lot better than covering his feathers in
purple marker. So, I had chosen my chicken, given him a name (Chicklett),
and now it was time to raise my chicken. Helping the group feed and water
the chickens every day, and sweeping the messes off the floor, weighing my
chicken every week to make sure he is properly gaining weight.
I
took pictures of my chicken as he grew, and still without marker, I can tell
him from the rest. My chicken has become a loved one; no matter how stupid
that sounds, he has. I am an animal lover, I have a dog and he�s like my
son, I go to the zoo and it makes me cry because the animals look so
depressed and lonely. So, yes I have, in fact, become attached to Chicklett,
and could not participate in his death. If you cannot understand my
perspective, let me put it in perspective for you. If you have a pet at home
that you love dearly, or if you have ever had a pet that you loved then look
at it like this, someone throws your pet in a cage with 4 or 5 others, and
says in 5 weeks you are to cut off its head, pull off its fur, clean out all
the guts, bag and freeze the meat, and take it home for your family to
enjoy, what would you do? Would you not do everything in your power to keep
a loved one safe? Are pets not loved ones? So, please do not judge what I
did on the grounds of stupidity and bad behavior, but on the grounds of love
and empathy for another living being. I have raised my chicken. I will not
kill him, but skipping the killing wasn�t enough, I had to save him.
Dissection is a major part of science, but there is almost always a
choice of doing an online version, or watching. We are told that we must do
some part of the slaughtering. My job is not cutting the chicken�s head off
or boiling it in hot water to make the feathers easier to pull out nor do I
have to gut the chicken. My job is to pluck each feather from my chicken,
and other chickens� dead bodies. Close your eyes and imagine having someone
cut off your head, and then stripping you naked, not a fun image right? Yes,
it is just a chicken to you, but to me it�s a living being and has just as
much right to live as we do. There is a choice in dissection, why not in the
slaughtering of an animal you raised?
So I will gladly accept any
punishment you give me, but I will not apologize for what I have done, I
will not regret it, and I would definitely do it again if I had to. I will
not say that Mr. Hamilton shouldn�t do this for future classes, but ask that
it say that on the registration sheet. I also ask that he would make
permission slips. If they write on the registration sheet �chicken
slaughtering involved� then there is no need to create an online option or
worry about future students doing what I have done, because your option then
is to sign up for a different class.
I will not be telling where my
chicken is, but that he is safe. I will gladly pay any cost that is asked of
me, because I did take the chicken, but please, all I ask, is that you
understand why.
Whitney Hillman, October 11, 2010
Dear Editor:
In response to some confusion about chicken slaughter
that is being circulated as a result of the �Broiler Project� at Concordia
High School in September-October this year, I would like to clarify a few
points.
First, large industrial slaughter plants do not decapitate live
chickens raised for meat, except by accident. Following a torturous trip
through an electrified waterbath designed to paralyze, not to stun, the
birds in order to facilitate removal of their feathers after they are dead
and to immobilize them during the slaughter process, the conscious birds are
subjected to partial neck cutting by automatic revolving blades, with manual
back-up for birds who miss the blades.
Second, the fastest and least cruel way to produce brain death in birds
and mammals at slaughter is by severing the carotid arteries that supply the
brain with its fresh, oxygenated blood, thereby maintaining consciousness.
Since the carotid arteries are deeply embedded in a chicken's or a turkey�s
neck muscles, they are very hard to reach, let alone cut quickly and
precisely.
Third, the jugular veins carry spent blood away from the brain. For this
reason, if only one or two jugular veins are cut, which often happens
because they're closer to the skin surface than the carotids, the bird,
whose carotids remain intact, retains consciousness of the slaughter
including the agonizing sensations of suffocating and choking in blood as
well as the excruciating pain of the cut neck, trachea and other parts of
the body connected to the nervous system.
What the chickens were forced to go through in Nate Hamilton�s slaughter
class on October 11 was not humane, nor was what his students were forced to
go through. Hamilton told his students to �cut the jugular vein,� which
actually increased and prolonged the birds� suffering, and it was further
reported by witnesses that students "hesitated" and shrank from knifing the
birds when the birds flapped and struggled with their feet wired together,
hanging upside down, with the feel of the knife cutting through their skin.
There is no more justification, pedagogically or ethically, for a
teacher to stage a chicken slaughter project so that students can learn the
reality of �food� production, than there is for a teacher to stage a
heroin-addiction project so that students can learn, first-hand, the reality
of drug addiction. It is also wrong (inaccurate and unethical) to mislead
students to believe that their only true food choices are between
�factory-farmed meat� and �meat� you kill yourself. People can get as huffy
and defensive as they wish about the need for �animal protein,� but the fact
is that animal protein is not necessary for human health and can even be
detrimental compared to a wholesome vegetarian diet. Students have a right
to know this, and they should be encouraged by their teachers to find out
more, including the fact that vegetarians eat just as much food as anyone
else, so it�s not like agriculture will go out of business if people go veg.
Karen Davis, President
United Poultry Concerns
Concordia
Blade-Empire, Nov. 15, 2010
�Just a Chicken�
by Chicklett, the baby rooster
You think I have no purpose,
I�m just food for your plate.
I hope
this facebook shows you,
Food was not my intended fate.
The world is
waking up now,
I hope you will wake up too.
Yes, I am only one
chicken,
But you need to wear my shoe.
I hope you learn from me now,
That happy meals and finger lickin�
Do not portray the true reality,
And cruelty toward the chicken.
I don�t deserve to die by a child�s
hands,
And my life is not your teaching tool.
I deserve to live as a
chicken should,
This �project� does not belong in school.
I hope to
change this indifference,
Though I know it won�t change for some.
But my death was not a needed event
To �Know Where Your Food Comes
From.�
You wanted us to wear for you
An �identification� head-stamp.
And live within the confines
Of your concentration camp.
When
you began to plan this �project,�
Did you ever stop and ponder
That
children and chickens would bond,
And their hearts would only grow
fonder?
You think that my short lifespan
Makes for a fair debate.
You knew I was genetically modified.
Why did you reenact the hate?
So you think death is a skill
That a child needs to know?
You
used me in your classroom,
And let the children watch me grow.
The
weekend before the slaughter,
We would like to have been fed.
But
you were not the hungry one,
We were just food, you said.
I think
you could have taught better,
Taught lessons more humane.
But
instead you only contributed
To sadness, death and pain.
I�m asking
that you learn from me now,
And read the messages I�ve read from some.
I think it�s time to turn tables on you,
Do you �know where YOUR
food comes from?�
You say it was all for �attention.�
I hope that
makes you feel better.
But we are seeking change,
And we�ll do that
� letter by letter.
You�d like this all to come to a stop,
You�d
like the quiet and silence.
But don�t you see? If I do that,
I�m
succumbing to the violence.
Whitney believed she had no choice.
She
had to grab me and run.
So you sacrificed every chicken,
Every
single chicken�but one.
So you think I�m just one chicken,
One less
meal on your plate.
But my purpose now is greater,
And that�s a much
better fate.
My final message is a gift to the world,
Please open up
your eyes.
See finger lickin� for what it really is,
One giant pack
of lies.
Chicklett�s poem �Just a Chicken� is expressed through the mind and
spirit of his friend and savior, Whitney Hillman, in memory of the 39
chickens, Chicklett�s flock mates, who suffered and died needlessly at
Concordia High School in Concordia, Kansas on October 11, 2010. To meet
Chicklett on Facebook, go to
www.facebook.com/chicklett.chickenhillman .
WHAT CAN I DO?
You can write to the school administrators, whose
names and contact information are provided above, to demand that the school
permanently eliminate the slaughtering of animals from the curriculum. There
is no justification for this kind of project. There is no justification for
putting knives into the hands of students, who have no idea what they are
doing, but are anxiously and fearfully submitting to a teacher�s violent
demands and feeling overpowered by his lack of empathy and desensitizing
attitude toward helpless animals and vulnerable young students worried about
their grades and about pleasing their teacher and protecting their
compassionate feelings from his ridicule.
You can also write letters to
the editor of the Concordia Blade Empire and the Salina Journal. Please
write thoughtfully and sensitively, in the mature manner of Whitney Hillman
to her teacher and principal. Thank you for being a voice for the chickens
and for the students, many of whom will be secretly traumatized for life as
a result of their participation in the torture and death of the chickens who
trusted them, and whom they had come to love and felt forced to betray by
the misguided adults they looked up to.
