PETA activists wearing gas masks and “chicken tails” descended on Pitt Street Mall this week to call on people to stop eating chicken. The flock aimed to remind consumers that eating the flesh and eggs of chickens and other birds funds factory farms, which are breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases such as the avian flu that’s currently tearing through Australian farms.

Chickens are curious, clever individuals with distinct personalities, but those used for meat are farmed more intensively than any other type of animal. Around 650 million birds are raised for their flesh in Australia each year, 90% of whom are kept on dark, filthy factory farms, where they’re denied everything that’s natural and important to them and severe crowding increases the likelihood of the spread of disease.

According to CSIRO, three strains of bird flu – H7N3, H7N9, and H7N8 – have been detected on poultry farms in Australia. In 2012, 2013, and 2020, previous bird flu outbreaks on farms in the country resulted in the mass killing of millions of birds. During the current outbreak alone, 1.8 million birds on farms in Australia have been killed in an attempt to limit the number of infections. Meanwhile overseas, H5N1 has infected birds and cows on farms as well as domestic cats.

Our appetite for chickens’ flesh and eggs is killing birds – and may end up killing us, too. Intensively farming animals makes the spread of viruses inevitable, and it’s likely only a matter of time before we face another pandemic. To continue confining and slaughtering animals when we could simply choose vegan foods is nothing short of madness.

Every time we sit down to eat, we’re either feeding injustice or fighting it. You can help change our food system, protect the environment, and reduce both the inherent risks to workers and the suffering of animals by ending your support for the exploitation and slaughter of living, feeling beings.

Please, eat as if all our lives depend on it, because they do.