Eating squab means eating baby pigeons. These highly intelligent, emotional, gentle and incredibly loyal birds are bred under factory farming conditions and then, when they are just 4 weeks old, they are yanked from their parents and the nest and sold to processing plants and live poultry markets.
They suffer terribly. Not only do people buy these live baby pigeons to eat but some people buy them to "release" at weddings or funerals and some to "set them free" thinking they are helping when really they are only encouraging the sellers with their money and torturing the poor baby pigeons with an agonizing death from predators. (Domestic pigeons bred for meat have no survival skills and are killed within hours to days of being "released".)
"The plight of pigeons in modern food production is largely unknown to the general public. Like other animals raised for food, adult pigeons and their offspring (squab) are raised in unsanitary, intensive confinement. California's upper San Joaquin Valley is a leader in squab production. In fact, the Squab Producers of California in Modesto operates the world's largest squab slaughterhouse... Spent breeder pigeons are sold for meat too. At the processing plant, squab and spent breeders are denied basic humane slaughter protections. In California, pigeons are not covered by California's Methods of Slaughter Law." (http://www.examiner.com/article/squab-production-another-cruel-delicacy)
Palomacy Pigeon & Dove Adoptions (formerly MickaCoo) was started in 2007 to help the survivors of the cruel squab industry who were "lucky" enough to escape the butcher and somehow survive in the streets long enough to get to an animal shelter where they were routinely killed for lack of adopters.
Please pledge not to eat baby pigeons! Say no to squab! End the demand for this cruel delicacy.
Thank you!
Elizabeth Young
