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Anngilee DeVaney
Brenda Sieczkowski
ENGL 2010
02/12/2020

Dear Corrupt Poultry Companies of the United States of America,

You disgust me. You will not find me pleading for the humane treatment of poultry in

this letter; you will not find anything in here about me trying to sway you from your corrupt

business practices. I know you are deaf to the pleas of citizens and consumers. Americans have

long known about your unethical and callous ways of treating your chickens. Wither egg laying

or broiler chickens, you cram them in so tight into windowless barns that they struggle to move

and breathe. You have no regard for the pain you cause them when filing their beaks, or during

the process of slaughter. Years of protesters on the streets marching with angry signs haven’t

swayed your frozen hearts in the slightest. Even when your filthy secrets are leaked on the

internet and your dirty laundry is flying in the wind for the world to see, your putrid money fills

the greedy hands of lobbyists to make proposed legislation to regulate your industry go away.

What possible chance could I have to make any difference in the lives of the 9 billion suffering

chickens you exploit and slaughter every year for profit? None. You disgust me.

How dare you. How dare you lobby for laws that make it illegal for a person to collect

evidence of food safety concerns, record animal abuse, or expose harsh living conditions. YOU

want to punish people who expose YOUR bad business practices? Well, you are going to find

that your “Ag-Gag” laws will only temporarily save your sorry hides. Already, judges across the

United States are pushing back, striking down your gag orders. They boldly state that your Ag-

Gag laws violate the First Amendment because they punish individuals who speak on topics that
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are of great concern to society. Ag-Gag Legislation seeks to silence any efforts that expose your

horrid animal abuse practices, but the quality of society’s food is far from a private matter, and

no person should be persecuted for exposing the truth. YOU are the animal abusers, YOU are the

monsters, and these whistleblowers have time and again proven your guilt and shown the world

you are incapable of ethical practices. How dare you.

How could you? It depresses me to see the lengths you go to in marketing your chicken

as healthy and clean when behind the curtains you have been pumping them so full of antibiotics,

drugs and GMO feed that they are no longer recognizable as chickens of a few years ago.

Chickens of today are now double their natural weight and grow to full maturity within only 6

weeks. They strain to move in their cramped quarters, and even your so-called “free-range”

chickens may never see the light of day or breathe ammonia-free air. When you have

manipulated an animal’s life to the point that they can no longer preform their basic functions,

when chickens can no longer grow, walk, fly, peck, socialize, or even just exist as God created

them, therein lies the proof that you have gone too far. How could you?

You will not find me pleading for these poor animals rights in this letter; you will not

find anything in here about me trying to dissuade you from making your living from another’s

death. I am done compromising with devils. What you will find, however, is condemnation. You

will find outrage and a small sample of an ever-growing list of your criminal acts that one day

you will be held accountable for. One day, you will be able to see societies come together, courts

and legislatures refusing to turn a blind eye to your barbaric practices, and they will push for

justice: for clean and sustainable farming practices and the truly ethical treatment of animals.

You’ll start to hear their voices saying, “Enough is enough,” and you will no longer be able to
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hide behind your army of lobbyists. And that, my ever-slimy friends, will be the beginning of

your end.

Sincerely,

Anngilee DeVaney
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Statement of Goals and Choices

My open letter is trying to make the top poultry companies of the USA feel uncomfortable in their seats.
It is meant to make them face their wrongdoings and remind them that those practices can’t last
forever--they are not sustainable—and one day if they don’t change they will collapse.

The work I am doing here is to bring more attention to farmed animals and the situations we put them
in. I am not against eating animals, but the way that companies are going about their business practices
are sleazy and inhumane. There are many, many people out there that turn a blind eye to how the meat
ends up on their plate and that needs to change. So a byproduct of my letter is in hope to help people
face the facts and give them a voice to stand up to companies and demand better quality and
sustainability.

All the major goals and purposes I have imagined for this letter are

1. Help people face where their meat comes from (from egg to table) and how it is treated.
2. Make big poultry companies stop and think of ways they can change/improve.
3. Help shake everyone awake to this non-sustainable way we are farming our meat.

My main rhetorical move has been to illicit a powerful emotional reaction by criticizing and stating the
hard facts about animal farming. I tried to use strong usage of Ethos and Pathos. I focused on my anger
towards what is happening and tried to convey that negative energy into my words. I tried to create a
rhythm in my paragraphs to draw the reader in and to help give a sense of tying the end back to the
beginning both in the individual paragraphs as well as with the first and last paragraph. I think that my
methods are appropriate for my audience because now days in order to be effective one must stand out
from the crowd. I feel that strong passion behind words brings in the audience and keeps them reading
to the end, and by that point has brought about such strong emotions in them that they are compelled
into action themselves.

I knew I wanted to write about large scale animal factory farming and the health concerns to humans,
animals and the environment but realized how huge of a topic that can be. I ended up writing on just a
few items involving the poultry industry because that was very specific and one that most people can
connect with (vegetarians can connect with it because many vegetarians are pro-animal welfare, and
meat eaters, even those who eat healthy still eat chicken and eggs). So, I chose to focus on large scale
poultry farms because I felt that would reach the largest audience.