In the United States, virtually all birds raised for food are factory farmed.

These animals spend their entire lives confined indoors, enduring overcrowded and filthy conditions. Enormous amounts of waste accumulate inside the densely populated buildings.

Packed in wire cages (the industry average is less than half a square foot of floor space per bird), hens can become immobilized and die of asphyxiation or dehydration. Decomposing corpses are found in cages with live birds.

According to Dr. Rollin in Farm Animal Welfare, “In 1933, the average yield per hen was 70 eggs a year. A yield of 150 eggs from a six-pound hen was considered unattainable. Today a four-pound hen produces 275 eggs per year.”

For about 72 weeks, as many as six layer hens are overcrowded into barren wire cages where they average less than half a square foot of floor space per bird. These wire cages are stacked upon one another in large sheds that contain 10’s to 100’s of thousands of birds. Layer hens never leave their cages to exercise or see the light of day and are maintained in filthy conditions full of urine and feces. They are denied the ability to do the most basic of behaviors such as nesting, dustbathing, and wing flapping.

Layer hens are subjected to inhumane practices such as debeaking and forced molting. Debeaking is the painful practice of removing the tip of the beak with a hot blade without anesthesia and pain medication. This is done to reduce the damage due to cannibalism and feather-pecking associated with the stress of intensive confinement. Debeaking causes both acute and chronic pain in these birds.

Forced molting is the removal of food for up to twelve days and sometimes water for up to three days to increase egg production. This inhumane practice is very stressful and causes a certain percentage of the birds to die.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the egg industry is their handling of male chicks. Since male chickens are worthless to the industry because they can not lay eggs, they are killed at only a few days of age. As if this is not disturbing enough, they are killed by suffocation in plastic bags, decapitation, gassing, and crushing. This means that about half of all the birds in the egg industry are inhumanely killed within days of being hatched!

As with cows and pigs, the same welfare concerns exist in transportation and slaughter for all chickens. Twenty-nine percent of layer hens have broken bones by the time of preslaughter stunning due to rough handling and bone weakness from intensive confinement. There is considerable debate over whether the electrical stunning currently used in poultry suffices to produce unconsciousness before slaughter.

Photos courtesy of Farm Sanctuary.