The Battery Caged Hen

Most people, including myself, will never see a chicken as a 'pet'. So why all the concern about eating eggs, and some cages? While they may not be a typical pet no animal should be dismissed as something that can be needlessly tortured so humans can more quickly consume them or their by-products.

To begin with about 95% of the 300 million egg laying hens in America are confined to Battery Cages. These hens begin in as chicks in a 'hatchery'. The male chicks are destroyed, or in some cases ground up, mixed with grain, and fed to the female chicks, as they are of no use in the egg industry.

The average hen is placed in a battery cage to begin her torturous life. The cage measures 20 inches by 20 inches, and she shares this cages with four other birds. The cages are kept in large windowless buildings, and are usually stacked in tiers six high.

We've all heard of the 'pecking order'. Well in a hens natural environment they do peck each other for dominance. A weaker hen can easily get away in such a case. In a Battery Cage with 5 hens sharing a cage the size of a folded newspaper, unable to fully stand or stretch their wings, this is not the case. In order to avoid the unavoidable, factory farmers cut the hens beaks using a hot blade and no anesthesia.

After two years in these conditions, the hens’ bodies are exhausted, and their egg production drops. These “spent” hens are shipped to slaughterhouses, where their fragile legs are snapped into shackles and their throats are cut. By the time they are sent to slaughter, roughly 29 percent of the hens are suffering from broken bones resulting from neglect and rough treatment.  Their emaciated bodies are so damaged that their flesh can generally be used only for chicken noodle soup, companion-animal food, or “canned, boned, and diced” meat, much of which goes to the National School Lunch Program