Official Statement From The CDC: Do Not Dress Up Your Pet Chickens For Halloween
ABC News- Louisiana resident Stephanie Morse treats chickens like family, and like any other family member, Morse’s chickens get costumes every Halloween. “Their bare skin is exposed, I just like to put a sweater on them to keep them warm and comfortable, and some of them have more personality,” Morse told CBS affiliate KNOE-TV. But people like Morse are being told not to trick-or-treat with their chickens this Halloween. The CDC is asking pet owners to refrain from dressing up their chickens this year due to a particular strain of salmonella. At least 92 people in 29 states have been infected with a strain of multidrug-resistant salmonella after coming into contact with raw chicken products. No deaths have been reported, but 21 of the sick patients have been hospitalized.
Lemme tell you something, CDC. This official statement telling people not to dress up their chickens for Halloween isn’t gonna do shit. For one thing, most people don’t even have pet chickens so the majority of us will look at that statement and completely forget about it 4 seconds late. I’m stunned that the CDC felt the need to address people who have pet chickens like that’s a normal thing do to. If anything, this will encourage people to go out and buy pet chickens so they can dress them up for Halloween. But the main thing is that the people who have pet chickens and who wanna dress them up for Halloween are gonna dress them up for Halloween regardless of what the CDC says. The Man is not gonna tell these pet chicken owners what to do with their pet chickens. No siree bob.
Honestly the people who own pet chickens likely won’t even know the CDC told them not to dress them up. The CDC might as well have printed out the statement and thrown it directly into the garbage. It’s not gonna be seen by the people it’s aimed at. The people who have pet chickens are the people who still live off the land and heat their home with a cast iron stove. You think the people who have pet chickens are the same people who have cable or internet or a computer? In the words of Kevin Francis Clancy, for sure not.