Photo by: Mercy for Animals, Weaver Brothers Egg Farm
in Versailles, Ohio
Megaphone, please.
"I am battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive.
My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable, cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform 'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.'
Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold."
© United Poultry
Concerns. From Karen Davis, PhD, "Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the
Feminine Connection," Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical
Explorations, Durham & London: Duke University Press,
1995.
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Photo by Laurie Melichar This is Luce, who was rescued by UPC member Laurie Melichar. Every year in the United States, a quarter of a billion of these beautiful male chickens are buried alive or ground up alive by the egg industry as soon as they are born. These birds represent 250 million more reasons each year to go - and stay - vegan.
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To find out information about KFC - http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/
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June 22, 2004 APPEAL ( by HH Dalai Lama to KFC to abandon plans to enter Tibet ) On
behalf of my friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA), I am writing
to ask that KFC abandon its plan to open restaurants in Tibet, because your
corporation’s support for cruelty and mass slaughter violate Tibetan
value. Tibetans are not, as a rule, vegetarians, because in Tibet vegetables are often scarce and meat forms a large part of the staple diet. However, it was considered more ethical to eat the meat of larger animals such as yaks than small ones, because fewer large animals would have to be killed. For this reason, consumption of fish and chicken was rare, in fact traditionally we thought of chickens only as a source of eggs, not as food themselves, and even eggs were seldom eaten because they were thought to dull the sharpness of mind and memory. Eating chicken only really began with the arrival of the Chinese communists. These days, when I see a row of plucked chickens hanging in a meat shop it hurts. I find it unacceptable that violence is the basis of some of our food habits. When I am driving through the towns near where I live in India I see thousands of chickens in cages outside restaurants ready to be killed. When I see them I feel very sad, because in the heat they have no shade or relief, and in the cold they have no shelter from the wind. These poor chickens are treated as if they were merely vegetables. In Tibet, buying animals from the butcher, thereby saving their lives, and setting them free was a common practice. Many Tibetans, even in exile, continue this practice where practically possible. It is therefore quite natural for me to support those who are currently protesting against the introduction of industrial food practices into Tibet that will perpetuate the suffering of huge numbers of chickens. Yours sincerely, THE DALAI LAMA
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Expert Opinions
“In no way can these
living conditions meet the demands of a complex nervous system designed to
form a multitude of memories and make complex decisions.”(1)
—Lesley Rogers, Ph.D.,
on battery cages, author of The Development of Brain and Behaviour in
the Chicken
The United Egg Producers tries to defend its practices as scientifically sound, yet ignores credible, scientific research that suggests standard industry practices—including crowding birds into barren cages with no opportunity to nest, roost, dustbathe, or touch earth; starving birds to induce molt; and mutilating their beaks without painkiller—cause unnecessary suffering.
Compiled on this page are relevant quotes from expert scientists and veterinarians, as well as the Humane Society of the United States.
- Ian Duncan, Ph.D.
- Joy Mench, Ph.D.
- Lesley J. Rogers, Ph.D.
- Michael Baxter, Ph.D.
- Michael Appleby, Ph.D.
- Temple Grandin, Ph.D.
- Eric Dunayer, DVM
- Christopher Patterson, DVM
- Humane Society of the United States
Ian Duncan, Ph.D.
Dr. Duncan on Battery Cages(2)
(UEP
guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)
- “Hens in battery cages are
prevented from performing several natural behaviour patterns. … The
biggest source of frustration is undoubtedly the lack of nesting
opportunity.”(3)
- “The lack of physical space may
actually prevent them from adopting certain postures or performing
particular behaviours.”(4)
- “[T]he difficulty of inspecting
cages means that the welfare of the birds is at some risk.”(5)
- “The lack of space in battery cages
reduces welfare by preventing hens from adopting certain postures—such
as an erect posture with the head raised—and performing particular
behaviors—such as wing-flapping.”(6)
- “Battery cages for laying hens have been shown (by me and others) to cause extreme frustration particularly when the hen wants to lay an egg. Battery cages are being phased out in Europe and other more humane husbandry systems are being developed.”(7)
Dr. Duncan on “Beak
Trimming”
(UEP guidelines recommend “beak trimming” without
painkiller.)
- “There is now good morphological,
neurophysical, and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads to both
chronic and acute pain.”(8)
- “[Beak trimming] has been shown (by me and by others) to cause both acute and chronic pain and should not be allowed to be carried out routinely. It has been banned in some European countries and they have shown that it is possible to keep hens without de-beaking them.”(9)
Dr. Duncan on Forced
Molting
(UEP guidelines do not prohibit forced molting.)
- “[T]he evidence suggests that hens
suffer enormously during forced molting.”(10)
- “[Forced molting] is a barbaric practice which doubles mortality in the flock while it is going and leads to great suffering in all the hens involved.”(11)
Joy Mench, Ph.D.
Dr. Mench on Battery Cages
(UEP
guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)
Note: Dr. Mench sat on the UEP’s advisory committee for its animal welfare guidelines, which recommend 67 square inches of cage space per bird for white laying hens, an amount of space Dr. Mench calls “meager”:
- “The recommended space allowance
for laying hens in some countries is 60-80 square inches per hen, barely
enough for the hen to turn around and not enough for her to perform
normal comfort behaviors; however, many hens are allowed less than even
that meager amount.”(12)
- “Battery cages provide an
inadequate environment for nesting, lacking both sites which fit these
criteria [concealment and separation from other birds] as well as
substrates for nest-building. Hens housed in battery cages display
agitated pacing and escape behaviors which last for 2 to 4 hours prior
to oviposition.”(13)
- “A different decision about the minimum recommendation would have been reached had the committee given more weight to the information from the preference testing and use of space studies, since these indicate that hens need and want more space than 72 square inches.”(14)
Dr. Mench on “Beak
Trimming”
(UEP guidelines recommend “beak trimming” without
painkiller.)
- “There is mounting evidence that beak trimming also results in behavioral and neurophysiological changes indicative of acute and chronic pain. … Both beak trimmed chicks and adults display difficulty in grasping and swallowing feed even when their pecking rates are high.”(15)
Mench: “Chickens explore their environment with their beaks. They like to pick things up, and that’s their main way of exploring and touching and feeling things.”
NPR: “So, cutting off the beak is a big deal, if you’re a hen?”
Mench: “It’s definitely a big deal.”(16)
Dr. Mench on Forced Molting
(UEP
guidelines do not prohibit forced molting.)
- “The bird is starved. Yes, the bird
is starved. I don’t like to see hungry animals not being given
food.”(17)
- “Feed restriction and deprivation can thus lead to boredom and the development of stereotypies and vices.”(18)
Lesley J. Rogers, Ph.D.
Dr. Rogers on Battery Cages
(UEP
guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)
Referring to battery cages, Dr. Rogers writes:
- “In no way can these living conditions meet the demands of a complex nervous system designed to form a multitude of memories and make complex decisions.”(19)
Dr. Rogers on Chickens
- “With increased knowledge of the behaviour and cognitive abilities of the chicken, has come the realization that the chicken is not an inferior species to be treated merely as a food source.”(20)
Michael Baxter, Ph.D.
Dr. Baxter on Battery Cages
(UEP
guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)
- “The space available in a battery
cage does not allow hens even to stand still in the way they would in a
more spacious environment. Some behaviours are completely inhibited by
confinement in a cage causing a progressive accumulation of motivation
to perform the behaviours.”(21)
- “When crowded together this
regulatory system breaks down and the hens appear to be in a chronic
state of social stress, perpetually trying to get away from their
cagemates, not able to express dominance relations by means of spacing
and not even able to resolve social conflict by means of
aggression.”(22)
- “[T]he frustration of nesting
motivation is likely to cause significant suffering to the hen during
the prelaying period every day.”(23)
- “Hens without access to perches may
have more welfare problems resulting from increased aggression, reduced
bone strength, impaired foot condition and higher feather
loss.”(24)
- “The fact that hens are restricted from exercising to such an extent that they are unable to maintain the strength of their bones is probably the greatest single indictment of the battery cage. The increased incidence of bone breakage which results is a serious welfare insult.”(25)
Michael Appleby, Ph.D.
Dr. Appleby on the UEP Guidelines
- “We believe the egg industry still has a long way to go before they can claim to be treating animals humanely. … The proposal put forth recognizes that animal welfare is a consideration, but it fails to address the worst abuses that are standard practice in the egg industry.”(26)
Eric Dunayer, DVM
Dr. Dunayer on the UEP Guidelines
- “In the end, the UEP’s guidelines do little more than codify already present industry practices. The proposed increase in space allotted to each chicken is both insignificant and falls well short of the area a chicken needs to carry out her normal behaviors.”(30)
Click here to read Dr. Dunayer’s full statement on the UEP guidelines.
Christopher Patterson, DVM
Dr. Patterson on the UEP Guidelines
- “The UEP’s attempt to address welfare concerns in laying flocks and to standardize husbandry practices is meager at best. Even though some useful recommendations are made, in most cases they are so vague and riddled with loopholes, that practically any egg producer could be “Animal Care Certified.” My biggest concern is how this certification program will mislead consumers into believing that they are buying eggs from producers that treat hens humanely.”(31)
Click here to read Dr. Patterson’s full statement on the UEP guidelines.
The Humane Society of the United States
- “The United Egg Producers is not tackling the systematic abuses within the industry that severely compromise the welfare of individual birds. … [The UEP guidelines] seem designed more to mollify consumers than to address the extreme animal welfare abuses that have become the norm in this industry.”(32)
References
- Lesley J. Rogers. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. (Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1995, p. 218).
- Dr. Duncan also has some positive comments on the welfare of hens in battery cages, mainly that they are more hygienic than production systems which group thousands of birds together on a floor, as is practiced by many so-called “cage-free” egg facilities. As well, hens seem to prefer to live in smaller groups of birds than in much larger ones containing thousands of birds, as is the practice of many “cage-free” but not necessarily truly free-range commercial egg facilities.
- Ian J. Duncan. “The Pros and Cons of Cages,” World’s Poultry Science Journal 2001: 57, p. 385.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., p. 383.
- Ian J. Duncan. “Thirty Years of Progress in Animal Welfare Science,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1998: 1, pp. 151-154.
- Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
- Ian J. Duncan. “The Science of Animal Well-Being.” A report from a speech in the Animal Welfare Information Center Newsletter, National Agriculture Library, 1993 (Jan.–March): 4.1, p. 5. As cited in Karen Davis’ Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs (Book Publishing Company, 1996, p. 68).
- Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
- Ian J. Duncan. “Thirty Years of Progress in Animal Welfare Science,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1998: 1, pp. 151-154.
- Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
- David Fraser, Joy Mench, Suzanne Millman. “Farm Animals and Their Welfare in 2000,” State of the Animals 2001, Humane Society Press, 2001, p. 93-94.
- Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 112.
- Joy Mench, Janice Swanson. “Developing Science-Based Animal Welfare Guidelines.” A speech delivered at the 2000 Poultry Symposium and Egg Processing Workshop. http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/pubs.htm.
- Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 117.
- “McDonald’s & Farming,” National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program aired on April 15, 2002. http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1141753.
- Ibid.
- Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 112.
- Lesley J. Rogers. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. (Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1995, p. 218).
- Ibid., p. 213.
- Michael R. Baxter. “The Welfare Problems of Laying Hens in Battery Cages,” The Veterinary Record 1994: 134, p. 617.
- Ibid., p. 618.
- Ibid., p. 618.
- Ibid., p. 615.
- Ibid., p. 618.
- HSUS press release entitled, “HSUS Says Egg Industry Guidelines Don't Go Far Enough,” June 27, 2002. http://www.hsus.org/ace/14515.
- Todd Hartman, "A fix in the henhouse," Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 16, 2002.
- Temple Grandin, Ph.D. “Corporations Can Be Agents of Great Improvements in Animal Welfare and Food Safety and the Need for Minimum Decent Standards.” A paper presented at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture on April 4, 2001. http://www.grandin.com/welfare/corporation.agents.html.
- Mary MacArthur. “Analyst Says Poultry Growers Oblivious to Poor Conditions,” Western Producer, Dec. 12, 2002.
- Eric Dunayer, DVM. Letter dated May 8, 2003, regarding new UEP guidelines. Click here for the full letter.
- Christopher Patterson, DVM. Letter dated June 8, 2003, regarding new UEP guidelines. Click here for the full letter.
- HSUS press release entitled, “HSUS Says Egg Industry Guidelines Don't Go Far Enough,” June 27, 2002. http://www.hsus.org/ace/14515.
Watch PETA Video
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/getvideo.asp?video=australia_chicken
KFC Abandons
Plans to Enter Tibet
after appeals from HH Dalai
Lama*
http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/dalailama.asp?c=114
After receiving an appeal from His Holiness the
14th Dalai Lama
Tenzin Gyatso, KFC has abandoned plans to open its
first restaurant
in Tibet. The victory comes after international media
coverage of
His Holiness' appeal, including this story from the
BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3836927.stm
His Holiness is the head of the Tibetan
government-in-exile and
spiritual leader to the more than 350 million
Buddhists worldwide.
The Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1989, has long
been known to speak out on social justice issues
ranging from China's
occupation of Tibet to the problems associated
with globalization.
Now, His Holiness has lent his voice to the 750
million chickens
raised and killed for KFC each year by writing a
powerful appeal to
KFC, asking the company to cancel its plans to
expand its growing
Chinese operation into his homeland of
Tibet.
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=dalai_lama_kfc View
PETA video
In his
appeal, His Holiness writes, "On behalf of my friends at
People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I am writing to
ask that KFC
abandon its plan to open restaurants in Tibet, because
your
corporation's support for cruelty and mass slaughter violate
Tibetan
values . I have been particularly concerned with the
sufferings of
chickens for many years. It was the death of a chicken
that finally
strengthened my resolve to become vegetarian. . These
days, when I see
a row of plucked chickens hanging in a meat shop it
hurts. I find it
unacceptable that violence is the basis of some of
our food habits. .
It is therefore quite natural for me to support
those who are
currently protesting against the introduction of
industrial food
practices into Tibet that will perpetuate the
suffering of huge
numbers of chickens." Click here
http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/pdfs/letter-dalailama.pdf to
read the entire
letter.
The Dalai Lama wants KFC to stop slicing the beaks off baby
birds
without pain relief, stop breeding and drugging birds to grow so
obese that their legs break and stop scalding millions of chickens
to death in slaughterhouses every year.
Do Chickens Suffer in Wire Cages?
Hens in Cage
Published in the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, on August 19,
2005 under the title, "Keep chickens out of wire-floored cages," the
following op-ed, by UPC President Karen Davis, is a response to
"Chicken-cruelty charge and video rebuffed by execs, others" by
Corydon Ireland, 07/02/05. The article, which discusses "A vegetarian
activist group [that] broke into the Wegmans Egg Farm in Wayne County
[NY] three times last summer and is now using video footage from the
illegal nighttime visits to level charges of animal cruelty against
Rochester-based Wegmans Food Markets Inc.," contains industry opinions
presented as "science" regarding the welfare of hens in battery cages.
The heartrending video, Wegmans Cruelty, can be viewed at
WegmanCruelty.com, or you can order the DVD from UPC for $10
(includes shipping).
Keep chickens out of wire-floored cages
By Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 08/19/05
Egg industry people often claim that hens don't mind living and laying
their eggs in wire cages, but this claim has more to do with assuaging
the public than setting the record straight. In reality, ample science
shows why chickens do not do "perfectly well" in cages.
Chickens' feet and legs contain complex joints including many small
bones, ligaments, cartilage pads, tendons and muscles that enable them
to search and scratch for food on land. Wild chickens (the Red Jungle
Fowl of Southeast Asia, from which all chickens derive) and feral
chickens (domesticated chickens that revert to living free) spend half
to 90 percent of their time foraging, making up to 15,000 pecks a day.
But it isn't just wild and feral chickens. As biologist Marian Stamp
Dawkins writes in her book Through Our Eyes Only?: "An ancestral
memory of this way of life seems to have carried down the generations
into the cages of our modern intensive farms so that even highly
domesticated breeds have the same drive to scratch away to get their
food."
Based on experiments, Dawkins explains that if hens kept all their
lives on wire floors are suddenly given access to a floor of
wood-shavings or peat, they have "an immediate and strong preference
for these more natural floors over the wire ones, which is all they
have known until then. They dustbathe, eat particles of peat and
scratch with their feet. It is not just the extra comfort afforded by
a soft floor that attracts them, but all the behavior they can do
there as well."
By contrast, when hens are forced to stand and sit on wire mesh, their
feet can become sore, cracked and deformed. The hen's claws, which are
designed to scratch vigorously, and thus stay short and blunt, become
long, thin, twisted and broken. They can curl around the wire floor
and entrap the hen, causing her to starve to death inches from her
food and water.
The overriding issue is that hens are birds with behavior patterns
that have no outlet in a cage. And it isn't just animal advocates who
point this out.
Concerning battery cages for hens, Dr. Lesley Rogers writes in her
book, The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken: "In no
way can these living conditions meet the demands of a complex nervous
system designed to form a multitude of memories and to make complex
decisions."
Chickens need to be cage-free.