Nearly 50,000 chickens died in farms in the last days as Lebanon experiences a heat wave.
Reports indicate that 40,000 out of 45,000 chickens in just one village died and the surviving 5,000 are still at risk.
In southeast Lebanon temperatures reached 36 degrees, and despite attempts to cool some of the chickens by spraying water thousands upon thousands of chickens died.
Dead chickens were scooped up and loaded into trucks while authorities work to find a way to dispose of them.
These chickens would have suffered horribly as they could not cool themselves in the cramped large scale farms.
Lebanon is part of the World Animal Health Organization (OIE), which has guidelines for chickens raised for meat.
'Thermal conditions for broilers should be appropriate for their stage of development, and extremes of heat, humidity and cold should be avoided. When environmental conditions move outside these zones, strategies should be used to mitigate the adverse effects on the broilers. These may include adjusting air speed, provision of heat, evaporative cooling and adjusting stocking density. Management of the thermal environment should be checked frequently enough so that failure of the system would be noticed before it caused a welfare problem.'
Learn more about the OIE regulations for chickens
The animal protection and welfare law, now needing only a final vote in Parliament, reinforces these guidelines. Extreme weather will happen in future, but such deaths should never happen again.
Read more
The Daily Star - Tens of thousands of chickens die in Lebanon heat wave