EGGS: The Hard-Boiled Truth & How to Crack the Cruelty

By Erica Meier

Newsletter for the Vegetarian Society of D.C., Spring 2007

When most people think about where eggs come from, they’re likely to conjure up idyllic images of Old MacDonald’s Farm with happy hens roaming freely outdoors with a backdrop of lush green pastures. The dismal reality, however, is that behind nearly every “incredible, edible” egg sold in grocery stores today is a hen crammed inside a wire battery cage so restrictive, she can barely even move. Denied the opportunity to engage in many important natural behaviors, she will never build a nest, forage for food, or even scratch the earth. Instead, she is treated like a mere egg-producing machine. After her exhausted body becomes too battered and weak to continue laying a profitable number of eggs, she’ll finally be plucked from her cage—and her first breath of fresh air will be on a truck bound for slaughter. That is, if she doesn’t die first or isn’t killed on the farm.

Egg-laying hens are subjected to some of the worst abuses imaginable. They are arguably the most intensively confined animals in agribusiness today. With virtually no laws protecting them, these birds can be—and routinely are—treated in ways that would result in criminal prosecution in all 50 states if those same abuses were inflicted upon cats or dogs.

The Hard-Boiled Truth

Every year in the U.S., nearly 300 million hens are raised for their eggs, approximately 95% of whom are forced to spend their lives intensively confined inside wire battery cages. A typical battery cage facility consists of multiple windowless sheds that run the length of a football field, each one warehousing tens of thousands of hens. Inside, row upon row of cages are often stacked four levels high with up eight birds stuffed in a single cage. At best, each hen is afforded a meager 67 square inches of living space—that’s less space than the size of a sheet of notebook paper.

Undercover video and photos taken inside these egg factories reveal overcrowding, severe feather loss, untreated illness and injuries, birds immobilized in the wires of their cages, and dead birds left in cages with live hens (visit EggIndustry.com). What the images are unable to capture, however, is the stench of thousands of pounds of excrement collecting in the manure pits below the cages—a stench the birds cannot escape.

Undercover egg factory farm investigations conducted by animal advocacy organizations across the country, including in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, and California, confirm that cruelty to animals is standard business in the egg industry.

The Sunny Side

As the painful reality of egg production increasingly gains the public’s attention, a growing number of people are choosing to express their compassion for animals by removing their support from this cruel industry. Indeed, the most important step each of us can take to help end the suffering endured by laying hens is to simply leave their eggs out of our shopping carts.

And with so many animal-friendly options available in grocery stores today, eating delicious egg-free foods is easier than ever! For easy egg-free recipes to help you crack the egg habit, visit VegRecipes.org.