Yeah that’s fucked up.

That tells me the police have nothing better to do.

First off, good. I’m glad crime is down. Second, let’s say we ignore the ethical part of what they did to the chicken. Their behavior still demonstrates serious mental issues that should get treatment before they negatively impact a person, right? Also, don’t ignore the ethical issues with fucking torturing a baby animal for no reason whatsoever.

Honestly par for the course for human treatment of chickens. See chick culling [1]. Billions of baby chicks are macerated live because they are not commercially useful.

> Worldwide: As of 2015, approximately 7 billion male chicks were culled annually around the world

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

Hard disagree. Burning something alive in a slow and agonizing death for zero purpose other than cruelty is nowhere near the same thing as near instantaneously killing an animal for animal husbandry purposes.

Could we do better or have better practices? Sure. Is there an argument for not eating meat at all? Sure.

But if you were going to die you would have a lot bigger problem being slowly roasted alive versus instant brain destruction.

The life they give the chickens they don’t cull is almost certainly worse than death, at least in the typical factory farm.