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Animal Place: JAILED BIRDS: From where do all those eggs come?

Hatchery Horrors

The hen raised for egg production begins her life in an incubator, where she is hatched without the benefit or pleasures of having a mother. The male chicks are considered by the factory farmers to be "worthless." They are discarded into a plastic bag and left to suffocate to death, or they are ground up or crushed by machines while still alive.

Soon the female chicks have part of their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, without anesthesia -causing both acute and chronic, lifelong pain. The mutilated beak makes eating painful. Even after healing, the beak is so severely mutilated that the hen can never feed or groom herself properly.

Crammed in Cages

Once the hen is old enough to lay eggs, things get even worse. Imagine a rectangle about 12" x 18" (about twice the size of this sheet of paper). This is the amount of floor space of an average wire cage used for housing egg producing hens. Four or five hens spend their entire foreshortened lives within the confines of such a cage! In a typical "battery" operation, which has as many as 70,000 hens under one roof, there are dozens of rows of cages, stacked as many as four tiers high. The excrement from hens above falls upon those below.

Normal movement in these cages is impossible. Because of the intense crowding, hens cannot exercise, osteoporosis sets in and their bones easily break. Their feet are in constant contact with bare wire resulting in painful sores. Wing flapping and stretching, flying, scratching, dust bathing, perching, normal socialization, preening, the use of a nest for laying and other chicken behavior are impossible under these conditions. Life is so stressful that one out of 100 birds may die each week.

Starving Hens for Profit

Chickens normally go through periodic molts during which they replace their feathers. During molt, the chickens do not produce eggs. It is advantageous to the factory farming industry if all the hens molt simultaneously. Therefore, after about a year of production, the hens the farmer does not kill are forced to molt, by withholding water for up to three days and food for up to two weeks. This causes such a shock to the hens that they begin to molt, but some simply die as a result. This shock also causes the hens to shed potentially deadly Salmonella bacteria which then pose a human health problem.

Going to Market?

Between the age of one and two years, hens are no longer "profitable" egg producers. This is based on the average number of eggs produced by the entire flock. When hens are no longer "profitable" they are sent to market -- an ordeal as horrendous as their "lives" on the factory farm.

Factory farm workers roughly rip the hens from their cages, often breaking bones in the process. The hens are then stuffed into crates and shipped, sometimes under freezing or extremely hot conditions, to a slaughterhouse. Our federal government does not regulate the slaughter of chickens. As a result, the hens are usually conscious while a knife cuts their throats. They continue to struggle as their bodies are then dipped into scalding hot water.


What You Can Do

Before making that morning omelette, think about your health and the chicken who produced that egg. Lots of alternative breakfast meals are available. Scrambled tofu with fresh veggies and salsa, cereal with soy milk, pancakes, fresh fruit, or bagels. There are also many egg replacements for baking purposes. Eliminating eggs from your diet lowers your risk of getting dangerous bacteria like Salmonella and Campylobacter, and lowers your cholesterol. More importantly, you can feel good knowing that you are not responsible for the inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms.

It’s time to give up the incredible, inedible egg!

FOWL FACTS

  • 300 million hens are raised each year in the U.S. for eggs.
  • "High" producing hens lay about 250 eggs each year.
  • One egg contains 250 mg of cholesterol.
  • In 1970, the average American ate 311 eggs; in 1997, this dropped to 239.
  • Egg consumption is the leading cause of Salmonella poisoning.