Thousands of Starlings Killed, to Assist the Killing of Cattle & Chickens

Killing breeds killing, in so many ways.

On January 24, thousands of dead starlings started falling from the sky over a New Jersey community. A farmer was fed up with their habit of eating the feed he puts out for the cattle and chickens whom he needs to fatten up before killing them. And at the farmer's request, the USDA gladly presented the starlings with food poisoned with the pesticide DRC-1339, a chemical that "causes irreversible kidney and heart damage to blackbirds, starlings, pigeons, crows, ravens, magpies and gulls," reports the Department of Agriculture, via this New York Times article on the killing.

And the department claims that this poisoning results in "a quiet and apparently painless death . . . one to three days following ingestion." Are they serious with this? What evidence is there that such a poisoning--a poisoning that destroys the kidney and heart and that takes "one to three days" to kill sentient, feeling animals--would cause "quiet" and "painless" death?! How about this? Why don't we administer an amount of poison proportional to what was fed to these small, innocent birds to a human and ask him or her to describe what such a "quiet and apparently painless death" feels like? Which farmer or USDA representative wants to volunteer? Wait, you mean no one wants to see what it feels like to have a poison coursing through his or her body, ravaging major organs?

And what does the USDA spokesperson Carol A. Bannerman consider to be "the thing that’s most regrettable" about all this? The fact that area humans weren't notified in advance. The thousands of birds whose deaths almost certainly were excruciating and certainly were unnecessary--that's not notably regrettable--but the fact that humans were temporarily inconvenienced or worried by the birds' carcasses? Now that's just damn awful.

But don't worry,  humans. The thousands of dead starlings whose bodies littered your sidewalks, streets, and yards for a few days died noble deaths for a higher purpose--they died so that one of your fellow humans could more cost-effectively fatten the cows and chickens whose dead bodies you'll eat for lunch and dinner tonight. Those thousands of birds were killed so that even more animals could be killed, so that you could eat the latter animals.

Reports the New York Times, "'It’s not that we don’t like starlings,' Ms. Bannerman said. 'Our intent was to assist a local farmer with a problem.'" Well, congratulations, Ms. Bannerman. Help the farmer, you did, even if he is apparently still complaining about "starlings freeloading on his feed." And I'm sure it's great comfort to the thousands of poisoned, dead starlings that you didn't dislike them per se.

Thus concludes our feel-good story of the day.

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Standing starling: Flickr user; Dead starling: Flickr user.