Hidden cruelty exposed

Imagine that you are in a small wire cage. The cage is smaller than an elevator. There are other people in the cage with you. You are all packed in so tightly that you cannot move without pressing up against someone, and the wire is bruising and cutting into your flesh. You have been trapped in this cage for about 18 months. You are in a giant warehouse and your cage is not the only cage. There are thousands of other full cages, stacked beside, above and below you. A while ago, your baby brother was ground up alive, your mother was recently pulled from her cage, and her was throat slit while she hung from her ankles. Some of the people in the cages have begun to go crazy under these conditions and have killed other people in their cages. You know it is only a matter of time before you, like your mother before you, are pulled from your cage, hung upside down and cut open to bleed to death.

The situation described above is not just an imaginary one for billions of egg laying chickens — it is their daily reality. Billions of chickens today are trapped in very small wire cages. These cages, called “battery cages” are stacked in rows by the thousands in huge factory warehouses.

In each cage there are up to six egg-laying hens. Each bird has less than half a square foot to live, and as a result, they are constantly rubbing against each other and their wire cages. This results in extreme feather loss and bruising. In such unnatural and cramped conditions, they are unable to dust bath, preen their feathers, make nests, or even walk or stretch their wings and legs. Sometimes they become trapped in the cages by their heads, wings and feet and they starve to death in this trapped position. Their feet often become deformed and cut up from the wire cage floor, and they develop lameness, brittle bones, osteoporosis and muscle weakness. All the while, they are breathing in their own manure fumes in poorly ventilated buildings.

Under these conditions, they become physically and emotionally frustrated and depressed. They go mad and are driven to excessive pecking. The weaker birds are unable to escape, and are pecked to death. To combat this, the egg industry had developed a procedure called “debeaking.” When birds are debeaked, they have up to two-thirds of their beaks cut off with a hot knife. The knife cuts through bone, nerve and soft tissue, causing severe pain for weeks. Some birds cannot even eat after debeaking and starve to death. Debeaking makes it impossible for the birds to peck each other to death, resulting in greater profits for the egg industry.

Though hens have been genetically engineered to produce more than twice the amount of eggs that they used to, the horrible conditions in which they are forced to live causes them to produce fewer eggs than they would if they were kept in better conditions. If better conditions would result in more eggs per bird, then why don’t the egg industries make conditions better for the birds? The reason is that it is more profitable to have more chickens crammed into cages, accepting lower productivity per bird, but greater productivity per cage. Chickens are cheap, cages are expensive. As a result, the birds are forced to live their whole lives in misery, unable to fulfill their natural behaviors or achieve a state of well-being.

At 12 to 18 months of age, the hens’ egg production rate begins to decline. These birds are considered “spent,” as they are no longer making maximum profits for the egg industry. After a life of cruelty and abuse, they are ripped from their cages and thrown into trucks. Due to excessive calcium loss from producing so many eggs, their bones are brittle and break easily as they are thrown from cage to truck. Workers are paid per bird, not per hour, so they have no incentive to handle the birds gently. Trucks then haul them to the slaughterhouse, where they are hung upside down by their ankles. Then their necks are sliced open with a blade, and they spend their last seconds or minutes of life dangling upside down, dripping blood, on the way to your local supermarket meat isle.

Meat from spent hens badly bruised from constantly rubbing against the wire cages. The bruised meat looks unpleasant and, as a result, it is shredded up and put into products where the blemishes can be hidden, such as chicken soup or chicken potpies.

Since male chickens are unable to produce eggs and don’t grow fast enough to be raised profitably for meat, it is not profitable to keep them alive. As a result, the unwanted baby male chicks are thrown into trash cans, where they are left to suffocate or die of exposure or starvation, or they are crushed or ground up alive. All mass-produced egg production, whether free range or factory farmed results in baby male chicks being killed.

Those who want to avoid being the cause of suffering can choose to eliminate eggs and meat from their diets. Many vegetarian foods serve in the place of egg and meat products. There are also many substitutes and egg-replacers that work in recipes instead of eggs. In boycotting egg and meat products, you will stop contributing to the pollution created by the egg and meat industries. On top of helping animals and the environment, you will help yourself, as a diet that is rich in vegetables and avoids meat and eggs greatly reduces the risk of heart attacks and cancer.

Many think that the way food animals are treated is cruel, but rationalize it as because “they are only animals.” It is true that food animals do not have the ability to talk or reason as humans do, but those are minor differences compared to the striking similarities in structure and function that we share. We both have bodies, flesh and blood, and brains and central nervous systems that experience pain and suffering. Animals from snails to whales even use the same neurotransmitter molecules that our own brains do.