There Are No "Good Eggs" By Sharon L. Wallenberg

 

THERE ARE NO “GOOD” EGGS

Cage-free, free-range, and organic are marketing terms used to sell eggs to consumers who erroneously believe that these eggs are guilt free.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Hens lay eggs.  The male chicks are treated by the organic, cage-free, free-range, and conventional egg industry as garbage.  These unwanted, unprofitable, vulnerable individuals are murdered, often hours after birth, by suffocation in large garbage bags, or are pulverized in machines designed to grind them up. 

While the male chicks are murdered soon after birth, the female chicks are mutilated by being de-beaked.  The sensitive beak, comparable to the human finger tip, is removed to prevent the babies from committing suicide by pecking itself to death, and thus eliminating profits.

These individuals have done nothing wrong to deserve this.  They are only guilty of being unprofitable.  In nature, Mother Hens keep all their babies – boys and girls – safe under their wings until they are old enough to venture out alone.

Cage Free facilities often house several thousand birds in a single building.  They cannot walk around, fly, groom themselves, or engage in any natural behavior.  They live in feces and urine, and breath ammonia not air.  But they are ‘cage free’.

Free range is no better.  These caring, affectionate, intelligent beings are not protected by any laws or regulations defining ‘free range’.  Free range is anything the profit driven producer wants it to be.  This is a marketing term used to sell products to uninformed consumers, not a way to treat the hens better.

Organic only refers to the food the birds eat.  All other horrific circumstances of their short horrific lives, and inhumane slaughter are the same.  Organic is about profit, not compassion.

In nature, hens produce approximately ten eggs a year, and only during the breeding season.  Commercial egg laying hens are forced to produce up to 300 eggs a year.  This is done by forcing a ‘moult’, or starving the hens into a new cycle in their bodies. 

Eggs are the hen’s menstrual cycle.  This often results in eggs being trapped in their bodies.  Since there is never any Veterinary help for these animals, the eggs are ‘cooked’ in their bodies.  This causes the hens to perish in a horrible and painful death.

Hens usually live 10 to 15 years in nature.  In the egg industry the hens live 12 to 18 months before their bodies give out.  

Hens are sentient beings not protected by the ‘Human Slaughter Law’.  Those very limited protections are reserved for mammals - animals, who like humans, produce milk for their young.  This restriction exists because humans can ‘relate’ to mammals more than hens.