Don’t order live animals via the mail. Consider all the cuts to the USPS since Trump’s first term. It is simply unbelievable that shipping a live animal via USPS is considered humane. Day old chicks are shipped all the time and are considered to be in the same category as food or produce. Many have always died during shipping because the process is not designed to handle live animals, but since Trump’s first term it has gotten far, far worse.

Under current policy, chicks are classified as perishable goods within the U.S. Mail system and handled in the same logistical category as items such as food or plants. This distinction matters. Because they are treated as parcels rather than live animals, they are not subject to the animal welfare standards required for other forms of live animal transport.

In fact, in 2020, in Maine alone, 4,800 baby chicks arrived dead after Trump’s postal cuts kicked into high gear.

The USPS has been allowing live animals to be sent through the mail since 1918. But with the current Postal Service crisis, there has been a huge spike in the number of chicks that are dying on the journey. In recent weeks, 4,800 baby chicks that were sent through the mail arrived dead to recipients in Maine alone. In other parts of New England, several other farmers have also reported receiving hundreds of dead chicks in the mail.

Meanwhile in California, workers at a large mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles “…fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing.”

If you have any compassion for living animals, do not ship them via USPS.