Farmers, retailer house owners, and different recipients of chicks despatched by means of the mail have reported that delayed deliveries have led to extra animals dying en route. Sadly, this may possible proceed, with USPS operations stricken by slowdowns.
Moreover, the total scale of this drawback will stay laborious to find out with out extra transparency. Many extra animals are possible dying than these reported within the media, and the USPS doesn’t report the variety of stay animals it ships yearly or what number of die inside its system.
At Farm Sanctuary, we have now seen birds undergo the impacts of stay mailing. In 2013, greater than 100 birds had been shipped from Texas to Alabama, however traveled almost 1,000 further miles and arrived in Washington, DC, the place native animal management alerted Farm Sanctuary. Simply two years later, a field containing 15 chicks was about to be stamped “return to sender” till a postal employee heard their peeps and helped to seek out them a house with us.
The general public, too, is put in danger by sending animals by means of the nation’s mail. Round three of each 4 rising illnesses are zoonotic in nature, capable of transmit between animals and people. 5 years after the world confronted a zoonotic COVID-19 pandemic, fowl flu is proliferating in animal agriculture, and transport has exacerbated its unfold from farm to farm throughout the nation. Delivery stay animals through the USPS presents an pointless and harmful threat to public well being.
Whereas different mail carriers ship stay animals, the USPS, as a authorities company, has the prospect and duty to set the usual. I hope you’ll take motion to stop pointless struggling and scale back the danger of spreading zoonotic illness by ending the delivery of stay animals by means of our nation’s postal service.