harsh truths about caged hens
1. Fifty percent of all laying chickens are born male but since males can’t lay eggs they are sorted out and killed within a day of their birth, often by being suffocated or ground alive to serve as fodder for pigs.
2. Most laying hens spend their entire lives in small cages in long metal buildings. The cages are stacked in long rows and on top of each other so that the feces from above rains down on the chickens below. They’re called “battery cages.” The hens can barely turn around, never smell fresh air and never feel the sun on their backs. This system is used throughout the United States and in Maryland. When you drive down a country road and see a long metal building with no windows, you’re probably looking at a factory farm for chickens with misery inside.
3. Because the chickens are raised in unnaturally crowded conditions, their beaks are routinely cut off with a hot blade so they can’t peck each other. This is not akin to cutting your fingernails because a hen’s beak is infused with nerves. It is extremely painful, more like cutting your cat or dog’s nails down well within the quick.
4. Laying hens are periodically subjected to a shockingly cruel process designed to increase their egg production. It’s called “forced molting.” Forced molting means that all food is removed from the hens for a period of about two weeks. This shocks their body into producing more eggs, but, as you can imagine, it is terribly cruel to the hens.
5. Finally, after their bodies are so wasted that their egg production has waned the hens are shipped to the slaughterhouse to be used in products such as canned soup.
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One last point: egg producers don’t want you to know this information so their packages and advertisements are sometimes deceptive. Don’t be fooled by notes such as “organic” (which only refers to chicken’s feed) or “certified humane” (which is often a marketing ploy that may have absolutely nothing behind it.) Even the words “free range” can include items 1, 3 and 4 above. Plus many facilities designated “free range” are really not free range for most of the chickens housed in these crowded, filthy factories. And, remember, even if the hens are really free-range and really well-treated, all the male chicks were killed at the hatchery---hundreds of millions of them are killed each year in the United States alone.
We can bring Pressure on GOVt to ban CAGED HENs as in AUSTRALIA and others
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So what’s a person to do once she’s finally willing to admit that eggs are cruel? Only you can answer that question for yourself. forego eggs entirely. We can boycott the cruelty and still eat delicious, healthy and satisfying food. more