Finally, a bit of justice for the most abused animal on the planet. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) charged Canada's largest chicken producer, Maple Lodge Farms, with 60 violations of federal animal health laws after it let thousands of chickens freeze to death during transport.

The CFIA cites multiple occasions on which Maple Lodge crammed crates full of chickens into unheated trucks and drove them to slaughter in temperatures well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. CFIA inspectors even found snow and ice inside the crates of some chickens who were stacked near the truck's freezing-cold metal floor and walls.

Our neighbors to the north seem to assert that chickens at least shouldn't be frozen to death, unlike in the U.S., where birds have no federal legal protection from cruelty whatsoever while being transported to slaughter. The best protection that chickens currently receive in both the States and Canada is from people who say "No" to supporting torture and "Yes" to cruelty-free mock meats.

It sounds like a belated April Fool's joke, and maybe it is, but scientists in Japan have reportedly found a way to create "meat" from human feces. You might assume that it would taste pretty, well, crappy, but word is it "tastes like beef."

I know what you're thinking: "Someone actually ate it?!" But when you think about it, people who eat meat are already eating poop, at least according to 60 Minutes, which referred to the bath chicken carcasses are dunked in before processing as "fecal soup."

And while eating excrement is gross, eating a decaying carcass is pretty gross, too. 

Japanese scientists point out that poop burgers can help allay cruelty concerns and reduce waste and emissions. So I'm not totally poo-pooing the idea. However, why eat, ahem, crap when we already have a plethora of tasty mock meats to choose from, not to mention a veritable cornucopia of fruits, veggies, grains, and legumes?

 
Written by Heather Moore