An egg for breakfast

41.

There’s a belief that eggs produced by free-ranging hens come from happy hens. For sure, they’re probably happier than their sisters in cages, but when they become economically unviable they go to their deaths in the same cruel way as their caged sisters. As for their eggs, they cost more to produce, of course, so the ‘battery egg’ is used in the production of food products containing egg. And most eggs eaten for breakfast are from caged hens, there are ten million in Australian cages and three billion caged hens world wide.

It’s worth knowing the story of the caged hen. Perhaps I should let her speak for herself:

“What exactly is it you don’t like about hens? Keeping us pressed behind metal bars like this. It hurts. There’s no room to move and the ammonia rising from our excrement makes it hard to breathe. There’s no fresh air in the shed we’re kept in. There are thousands of us crammed into tiny cages. We lay an egg nearly every day of the year for about one and a half years, then we’re taken to the processing plant. 

“You saw on TV the other day a story about egg-laying. You used the word “disgusting” when you saw those batteries of cages in the shed. Nasty sight eh? Maybe it caught you by surprise. Sitting there in front of your TVs there was a lot of shaking of heads in disbelief, and some drawn-in breaths, and a few despairing hand gestures. But there wasn’t much more happening. You didn’t say “No more eggs for me”. So much for all that disgust and shaking of heads. What did it mean? Probably not very much at all.

“Would you like to boast, “I’m a Vegetarian – I abhor all killing?”. Well, let me tell you, it isn’t just about meat. Eggs is all about killing too, and worse. When we hens don’t lay enough eggs, they throw us into crates and take us off to the killing factory, which they call a ‘processing plant’ - it sounds nicer put that way. Then they hang us upside down by our thin spindly legs and send us on a conveyor into a prickly trough of high voltage water that stiffens every nerve in our body, so they can  position our necks for the final cut, a set of sharp revolving blades. And that’s the end.

“Can you believe this happens? No? Well, let me tell you, it’s been this way for a long time, the egg business has pioneered the ultimate cruelty, from caged hell to the terror of the killing machines. And YOU don’t care, because here you are, all seated around the breakfast table, tucking in to your breakfast eggs, with no thought for us poor birds. We suffer unimaginably, from birth to death. We girls almost envy our brothers who were thrown, live, into the grinding machine, on day one. At least their agony wasn’t prolonged. They never had to experience the terrible suffering we went through for the twenty or so months of our lives”.