Extreme Cruelty at Largest Egg Farm in New England
Posted by Drew.
Last week, Mercy For Animals, a Midwest-based animal rights group, released video footage, photos, and notes from a 3 month undercover investigation into New England’s largest egg farm. The investigation took place at Quality Eggs of New England’s Turner, Maine facility. The investigator documented egg-laying hens living in filthy, inhumane conditions. This new exposГ© really hit home with me. It’s easy to think of factory-farming as a distant problem, but QENE is right in our backyard.
The anonymous investigator found 6-10 birds crammed into barren, wire cages. Each bird was only given somewhere around 72 inches of space, that’s smaller than a standard sheet of paper. The footage shows rotting carcasses in cages with hens who are still laying eggs for human consumption. It documents workers and managers throwing live birds into trash cans to be crushed to death by other birds. Many hens suffer painful injuries and never recieve veterinary care. Workers at QENE kick the animals into the manure pits below the battery-cages, where hens either drown in liquid waste or die slow deaths of starvation or sickness.
This kind of animal abuse is extreme, but also routine at egg farms across the United States. The vast majority of eggs, somewhere around 280 million come from hens who live their entire lives in battery-cages. Nearly all eggs at supermarkets and all eggs used in restaurants come from these kinds of cruel factory-farms.
What can we do in Worcester? Well, two years ago students at WPI worked with the dining services to get them to commit to only use eggs that come from cage-free sources. That’s a a huge step forward! Sure, the truth is that hens who live in cage-free factory-farms don’t exactly live happy, full lives free of suffering, but they do have a slightly better life.В It’s a step in the right direction!
The best thing we can do for hens, is to simply not eat their eggs. That’s super-easy in Worcester. We’re lucky toВ have a ton of great vegan-friendly restaurants. There are a handful of cafes and bakeries that offer yummy vegan baked goods. The Living Earth and the Artichoke Food Coop both have a lot of great vegan products like egg-free mayonaise. Even Shaws and Price Chopper have great animal-friendly foods like veggie burgers, veg “chicken” nuggets, tofu, soy cheese, and many more.
April 11, 2009
Tags: battery cages, videos Posted in: Animal Rights, Misc, News
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