Thousands of chickens were burned alive after a huge fire broke out on Tuesday at an intensive egg farm in Victoria in Australia. Up to 45,000 chickens were in the shed when it went up in flames. None of them survived the blaze.
Although the farm was “cage-free”, the birds had nowhere to escape to, leaving them trapped inside the burning shed.
Investigators from Farm Transparency Project, an Australian animal protection charity, visited the scene Tuesday night to document the aftermath. They captured graphic footage and photographs showing the charred bodies of masses of dead birds.
“Every single one of the hens here, believed to be up to 45,000, were horrifically burned alive. Their sheer terror and pain as the fire ripped through the shed is unimaginable,” the charity wrote on its website.
“The excruciating deaths of these animals are brushed off as ‘stock loss’, as though they’re units in a warehouse,” Farm Transparency Project said. “We wanted people to see these very real consequences, to spare a thought for what these animals endured.”
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