"Free Range" Farming

100 spent hens, rescued from a "free range" egg facility, began their lives at Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary the day they were scheduled for slaughter. When educating yourself or informing others about the horrors of factory farming, please remember these faces, and please remember that "free range" farming is not a "humane" alternative. From the victim's perspective, they are exactly the same thing. 
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At 18 months of age, a fraction of a chicken's life span, these hens were considered spent, unable to produce eggs at a fast enough rate, and they were scheduled for slaughter. All 100 of them bore the physical and psychological scars of an entire young life spent in the crowded confines of a sunless, windowless, ammonia-filled cement shed. Even after weeks of sanctuary life, many are still in a state of constant terror, still panicking at the drop of a leaf, still cowering at the smallest noise, as if hit by a physical blow to the body. 
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Please remember their faces, and please remember that, ultimately, the value of a sentient life is not measured in its utility to others, but in its immense, irreplaceable value to the being whose life it is. 


For more information, visit Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary.

Egg Farm

Life in a Nightmare -- Egg Farm

Animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing documents conditions on multiple egg farms to demonstrate that cruelty is the norm, not the exception, in the modern egg industry.

What Their Lives Are Really Like (video)

Egg Farm Investigation (video)

Inside an Egg Factory Farm

From November 30 to December 9, 2005, an investigator affiliated with Compassion Over Killing worked undercover at Esbenshade Farms, one of the nation’s top egg producers, located in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. While there, he documented appalling conditions for hundreds of thousands of hens including:

• birds overcrowded in wire cages so small, they cannot spread their wings,
• hens left to suffer from untreated illnesses or injuries,
• birds with their wings, legs, or feet entangled in the wires of cages, unable to access food or water,
• injured or dying birds removed from their cages and left in the aisles without access to food or water,
• birds impaled on the wires of the cages with many found already dead as a result of the painful immobilization, and
• hens living in cages amongst decomposing bodies of other birds.

United Poultry Concerns

United Poultry Concerns has a very informative website. Please check it out:

 United Poultry Concerns Website

Battery Cage Hens

Photo by: Mercy for Animals, Weaver Brothers Egg Farm in Versailles, Ohio

Former Battery Cage Hens

Photo: Susan Rayfield

From rotting in cages to roosting in branches, former battery hens enjoy life at United Poultry Concerns. Despite thousands of years of domestication, chickens are essentially the wild jungle fowl of their ancestry, with the same cravings for lush soil, trees, and activities suited to the tropical forests they originated in. May is International Respect for Chickens Month. Let people know how beautiful and “green» chickens truly are.

Salmonella

The Real Story Behind Eggs

Written by PETA   Posted 08-26-2010

Ever since half a billion eggs were recalled because of a salmonella outbreak, people have been talking about food safety regulations. Animal welfare issues have been mentioned, but they need to be considered more seriously. The following are some facts to help you tell the hens' side of the story:

There's cruelty in every carton of eggs:
Ninety-nine percent of hens used by the egg industry are confined to filthy, crowded battery cages. In June, the owner of one of the egg farms involved in the recall—and of the company that supplies chickens and chicken feed to both farms implicated in the outbreak—pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals and paid more than $130,000 in fines and restitution following an undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals.

Salmonella spreads like wildfire on factory farms:
Under squalid factory farm conditions, it's easy for salmonella bacteria—which live in the intestines and feces of animals—to spread from bird to bird and from birds to people. Vegan foods don't naturally harbor salmonella bacteria.

Avoiding eggs is the best way to prevent salmonella poisoning and reduce animal suffering:
A salmonella vaccine that has been used successfully in Britain is available, but American regulators don't believe there's enough evidence to show that vaccinating hens will prevent people from getting sick. It's obvious that our food safety regulations are not all they're cracked up to be and that the safest and kindest way to prevent salmonella poisoning is to stop eating eggs altogether. PETA is urging Iowa schools to stop serving eggs to children in order to help protect them from food poisoning. You can opt for egg replacer, scrambled tofu, and other tasty vegan foods.

The Battery Hen

Her Life Is Not For The Birds

by Karen Davis

The modern hen laying eggs for human consumption is far removed from the Burmese jungle fowl from whom she derives and the active farmyard fowl of recent memory. Rather, she is an anxious, frustrated, fear-ridden bird forced to spend 10 to 12 months squeezed inside a small wire cage with three to eight or nine other tormented hens amid tiers of identical cages in gloomy sheds holding 50,000 to 125,000 debeaked, terrified, bewildered birds. By nature an energetic forager, she should be ranging by day, perching at night, and enjoying cleansing dust baths with her flock mates--a need so strong that she pathetically executes "vacuum" dust bathing on the wire floor of her cage.

Caged for life without exercise while constantly drained of calcium to form egg shells, battery hens develop the severe osteoporosis of intensive confinement know as caged layer fatigue. Calcium depleted, millions of hens become paralyzed and die of hunger and thirst inches from their food and water.