The animal rights movement gains little changes in little industries, but fails to understand the mechanism.
The movement is fighting a very powerful motivation of the exploiters to become more efficient in order to increase profits.
The ostrich and the emu industries are another example of the global mechanism.

Regarded as the main meat of the future the ostrich and the emu, the world's two largest birds, will become "the other bird meat". Their meat is being promoted to consumers as looking and tasting like beef, but with less fat and cholesterol and fewer calories than either beef or poultry.
Cattle ranchers, small farmers, future agriculturalists, retirees, banks and other investors are being urged to regard the farming of these birds as potentially very profitable, even more than cattle, with minimum land, food and facility requirements.

Ostriches are nomads.
They need to keep moving. Wild ostrich chicks and their parents cover 15 to 20 miles a day. Over 60% of an ostrich's daily activity is devoted to walking. Confinement to an acre or less of land, devoid of stimulating activity causes these birds to develop leg problems. Another significant reason for the high prevalence of leg problems among ostriches and emus is the excessively high in protein diet that force them to grow rapidly.

The ostrich is a herbivore (plant eating animal) and the emu is mainly a plant eater. In the intensive meat production farms, they are forced to consume meat by-products and other inappropriate foods. They have become one more dumping ground for agricultural waste products. They suffer from leg deformities, digestive maladies, reproductive disorders, and transmissible diseases, such as avian influenza, similar to what chickens, turkeys, and ducks endure under intensive conditions.
Stress from these conditions raises the bird’s susceptibility to disease.
To combat diseases, drugs and antibiotics are often used. The high levels of toxicity exacerbate the stress these birds must live with.

The most common way of raising emus and ostriches is to collect new laid eggs and put them in an incubator. Losing her eggs prompts the mother to lay more, so a prolific emu hen can lay up to 50 eggs in a season.

Ostriches are easily stressed thus the transition from breeding farm to livestock farm is a major distress for the ostrich chicks and is one of the main factors for the huge death rate among them.

Another major cause of ostriches’ high death rate is the yellow liver chick syndrome. Due to poor feeding and nutritional deficiencies the liver of the mother hen is malfunctioning, this causes the hen to lay an egg with an inferior yolk sac, hence, the bile production in the embryo never begins, or it starts and then stops, causing the yellow liver chick syndrome meaning a dysfunctional liver.

After hatching, failure to intake the yolk sac during the proper time may cause developing problems to the young chicks. The yolk material is necessary for providing both nutrition and antibody, but the chicks who need a lot of activity to stimulate yolk sac involution, fail to do it as a result of the poor husbandry, excessively rich diets, lack of exercise, and stress of handling. This is another major cause for ostriches’ high death rate.

For their first three months of life ostrich chicks are very delicate, often dying for no apparent reason (the fading chick syndrome). Mortality is between 10%-25%, mostly between two to four weeks after hatching. In their natural habitat ostrich chicks are strong and hardy.

Up to 17% among young birds die due to leg problems.

And the final reason is that some breeders are so eager to "cash" a chick, that they crack open the eggs prematurely with pliers or drill holes in the eggs.

In nature, the choice to mate is mutual. After their courtship, a pair of emu will choose a nesting site and build it together. Once the female has laid the eggs, the male emu incubates them. Same goes for ostriches except the female and the male take turns of hatching on the eggs.

However, Farmers don't like monogamy in their flocks because it means they can't get by with only one or two male 'studs' to impregnate all the females.

The breeding stock as with all commercially reared poultry today, leads unnatural and stressful lives. When breeding begins, a male and three females are given a half-acre paddock. In the hatching period the breeding ostriches are being kept in relatively small paddocks of one-quarter to half an acre per pair. When the eggs hatch, young growing birds are stocked at 6 - 10 birds per acre.

Ostriches use their wings to cool themselves, moving them slowly back and forth to direct a cooling breeze over their featherless thighs and sides while standing against the wind.

The ostrich and the emu industries would have us believe that plucking feathers is as painless as cutting one's hair. In fact, the feathers are firmly held in a follicle, richly supplied with sensory fibers and nerves. Even clipping the feathers above the nerve endings pulls on the sensitive skin and muscle tissue to which the feathers are attached. The removing of a feather from a bird requires a hard, sturdy pull.
The feathers are plucked from a fully conscious ostrich, without any anesthetics.
The method is a combination of plucking, clipping, and "quilling". The body feathers of ostriches, bred exclusively for feather production in Africa, are plucked every 7 to 10 months. Plucking refers to pulling the whole feather, plume and quill, straight from the socket by hand.

The wing plumes of adult birds are clipped off with hedge clippers or pruning shears.
The ostrich is restrained in a "plucking box", sometimes wearing a hood to render the bird blind and helpless, while feathers are cut approximately two inches above the socket. Closer cutting causes hemorrhage and feather regeneration damage, as blood vessels and nerves run through the center of the feather stopping near where the feather unfolds.

The quill is left in the socket to ripen. Were the plume allowed to remain until the quill, too, is ripe, it would depreciate through wear and exposure. The quill ripens in about two months after clipping; it continues to grow as long as the germ is active and is being pushed further out of the socket. The medulla recedes and withdraws from the quill when the latter is ripe, leaving only a tiny plug in the lower umbilicus. The quill is now hollow, except for the cones which can be seen through the transparent wall. Below the ripe quill is the new feather germ which will give rise to the next feather when the old quill is removed.

Were the quill to remain in the socket indefinitely the new feather below would become active in time and push it out. This actually happens in natural moulting of feathers. The awakening of the new germ may be delayed long, and natural moulting of all the feathers is a drawn out process resulting in very uneven feather growth with old quills, new and ripe feathers on the bird all at the same time - a condition which every ostrich farmer tries to prevent at all cost. This is by drawing the quills artificially and performing for the bird what he himself would accomplish but in a leisurely and irregular fashion. It is a hastening of the natural process to secure a complete and even crop. The old quills seem to cause discomfort to the bird - probably itching as the ostrich is often seen pecking at them in an attempt to remove them.

The dead quill is quite loose and can be extracted by gasping it with the hand supporting the socket with the finger and thumb. Usually ordinary pincers or pliers are used for the operation. The drawn quills are of no use and are thrown away.

Studies on poultry (such as ducks and other birds) show that feather removal causes "marked changes" in the bird's behavior. From an alert, agitated response including jumping, wing-flapping, and screaming following the initial removals, to periods of crouching immobility with the head drawn into the body. These reactions exhibit the learned helplessness that is developed in birds and other animals subjected to traumatic events.

The emu is said to be 95% consumable...

Emu’s oil - is likely to be the most profitable part of farming and slaughtering emus. It is increasingly used as an ingredient in medicines and therapeutic products like rubbing oil for the treatment of arthritis. It is also used in some cosmetics because of its supposedly remarkable ability to penetrate and soften the human skin.
Emu’s leather is used for book binding, boots, wallets, belts, luggage and fashion accessories.
Emu’s meat - emus are usually slaughtered at about 10-15 months of age. The meat is taken mainly from the thigh and is a gourmet item in top restauants in Europe and America.
Emu’s eggs – are supplied to restaurants or are carved (there are three layers of shell - green, blue and white) for the tourist trade.
Emu’s toenails – painstakingly decorated with glittery paint and golden threads, emu toenails are sold as jewellery and decorative items.
Emu’s feathers - are used by the fashion industry because of their beautiful and unique two feathers per quill formation. They are also used for feather dusters and in the industrial arena for finishing metal prior to painting.

Think about what happens to these sensitive, easily stressed birds with their long thin necks and legs, and their large, fragile eyes during transportation. Every turn, every step on the breaks, the heat, the cold, the density, the deprivation of food and water, the truck vibrations, are all very stressful to the animals led to slaughter. They constantly get hurt by small openings, sharp edges and being injured and even killed from being loaded too tightly.
Crowded ostriches will often fight or hurt one another by pecking or stepping on each other.
In the end of the line, the atrocity of slaughter awaits.

After the stress of transport, the ostriches may be penned up in darkness with a hood over their head. The next day, still hooded, they are taken to the slaughter pen. Their legs are hobbled and the hood is soaked in water. An electric sheep stunner is clamped across their head, then they are hoisted up and their throat is cut.

The industry magazine "ostrich news" suggests the following, as slaughter guidelines:

• "The ostrich should be penned up in a large room the evening before slaughter. The large room should have the facility to shutter it from light, so it is completely dark."

The light deprivation is designed to subdue the bird, who is dependent on visual stimulation and the company of others of his kind.


• "The ostrich should be hooded overnight, so as not to stress it prior to slaughter."

Hooding will leave the bird completely disorientated and distressed.


• "The hood should be soaked in water and the feet hobbled 18 inches apart."

This is perhaps the most horrible part of the slaughter process, these subdued, disoriented birds will be doused with water and have their feet immobilized.


• "The next morning the ostrich should be moved to the slaughter pen to be electrically stunned."

In most cases, the electrical stunner causes the opposite of its original purpose. Instead of reducing animals’ pain, it fails to stun them, because of false use or costs reduction, so it ends up increasing their suffering. They are being electrically shocked and slaughtered fully conscious.


• "An electric sheep stunner should be clamped across the head from side to side. Once stunned, the ostrich should be hoisted upside down and bled to death."

Electrical stunning followed by slaughter bleeding to death is one permitted killing method for ostriches. Others are: killing by free bullet, neck dislocation and decapitation.

For every "win" by the animal rights movement, new practices of exploitation rise and old ones intensify. There is no limit to the ingenuity when it comes to exploitation. The exploitation systems are getting bigger and bigger.
Ostriches, emus, kangaroos, pheasants and alligators are the relatively new exploited species. Not that the type of the animal matters. It is not the species, it is the suffering.