The cage

The first cage system was built to house the egg-laying bird, thousands of them in one shed in batteries of cages. The hen was now going to be kept encased and immobilised for the whole of its adult life the length of which was to be determined by its egg productivity rate alone. She always had been the complete victim of her own menstrual cycle and now was to lose the last vestiges of her animal nature by becoming no more than a living machine for the mass production of her egg, her powerful protein package for human consumption. Flock numbers were greatly increased and each individual animal was locked into a tiny cage with one or two others, in which she would lay. She would produce as many eggs as any free ranging hen could, and even more. This cunning idea was about to revolutionise food production techniques.
The cage became an essential component of the application of industrial mechanised process. By caging birds, the cage itself came to represent one of the most cynical suspensions of compassion ever contemplated by humans. In order to guarantee food supply, we decided to become thoroughly pragmatic. After the war food was short. It was rationed. During the war the caging system was an emergency measure designed to feed many people with a high protein food. The advent of battery hen farming came at a time when many other horrible things were happening. Its introduction was barely noticed.
By the end of the war, "battery farms" were already established. The system, involving batteries of cages in rows, tier upon tier, produced eggs very cheaply at the cost of cheapening the hen’s life to the point of condemning each hen to life-imprisonment. Now, the hen had been reduced to a biological function.
Far from caring about all this people looked away and soon enough what went on behind closed doors was forgotten. Almost no protest arose for nearly thirty years. No one seemed to care about the welfare of these long time friends of humans, who had been abandoned to their fate. Very few objected to hens being made into machines working for the egg industry. This caging system is perhaps the most anti-altruistic thing humans have ever done and it has given rise to a whole new awareness in the form of a vegan philosophy. Our crimes against animals, especially the millions and billions of animals used for food has given rise to the concept of "speciesism". This now is a major divide between one person of one attitude and another with the opposite speciesist attitude.