Happy Easter From United Egg Producers, the Battery Cage People
Since TV celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall launched exposes of poultry production in the UK late last year, three quarters of polled consumers said they’d buy free range chicken and eggs and that stores should not carry any other kind.
In the US, more than 300 schools, Burger King and United States House of Representatives are phasing out cage produced eggs–and Wolfgang Puck and Whole Foods Market have completely done so.
Yet United Egg Producers (UEP), the trade group which represents 85% of US egg farms, continues to defend battery cage produced eggs and even disguise them under the illegal label, “Animal Care Certified.”
In 2005, in response to Better Business Bureau charges that the label “Animal Care Certified” was misleading, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the label should read “United Egg Producers Certified” by March 31, 2006.
UEP even paid a $100,000 fine and signed an agreement with Attorneys General in 16 states to settle false advertising claims in 2006.
But the deceptive labels still appear.
“Animal Care Certified” labels appear on UEP egg cartons in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware charges Compassion Over Killing, the animal welfare group which originally filed petitions with the Better Business Bureau and the FTC in 2003 and last month filed a lawsuit against the egg industry and an egg factory farm in New Jersey for consumer fraud.
UEP says the deceptive labels are a “printing error.”
Since the cage free movement gained momentum in 2006, US egg sales dropped from 2.02 billion dozen in 2002 to 1.84 billion dozen in 2006, a 8.6 percent decline in just four years.
Of course public perception of eggs as “strokes in a shell” hasn’t helped sales. A recent study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found an egg a day increased the risk of actual heart failure.
But egg production is one of the cruelest forms of animal confinement agriculture most agree.
Even UEP consultant Joy Mench, director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the University of California, Davis says, “There’s no question the cages restrict the hens’ movement” and that the skeletal calcium depleted to produce eggshells leaves hens with weak bones prone to breaking.
Nor do poultry workers have better reports.
“After six weeks in the incredibly crowded cages of this facility, you could not recognize the poor creatures as chickens, ” writes an internet commentator of a summer he worked on a egg farm. “Missing most of their feathers, eyes, bloody, broken and unable to walk, our job was to grab these birds, by any means necessary, and throw them into a truck. Where did the truck go? To a chicken soup plant a few towns over. Unable to sell these bruised and battered chickens as whole chickens, the egg plant owners would sell them to be made into soup base. As if their lives were not hellish enough to that point, these birds would be flung, often after being battered against the pillars of the plant and kicked a few times for fun by the sadistic workers, who were mainly teenagers and weird illiterate country bumpkins. The chickens, nearly dead, would be transported in unheated trucks to the soup plant to be battered and likely boiled alive to make soup . . .”
At its annual board meeting in Chicago last October, UEP encountered 35 protestors holding photos of hens in the condition the former poultry worker describes.
“From Shell to Hell,” “Egg Producers Torture Birds” and “Ban Battery Cages” read signs and banners outside of the Hyatt Regency while visiting UEP officials discussed the production of the 250 million caged hens that constitute their flock.
At the end of the annual meeting, UEP announced it would develop its first ever guidelines for “hen welfare in cage-free production systems” to begin taking effect April 1, 2008.
Of course, UEP also said it would remove its misleading “Animal Care Certified” labels over two years ago.
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
You cant make slavery free.
People dont need toe at eggs–forcing chickens to lay eggs for human consumption will never be compassionate.
In Jonathan Swift’s time, they didnt have factory farms, but you still have vegetarians They even used to burn the eyes out of birds so they grow fatter.
Veganism is the only rational ethical diet system for humans today.
Veganism is a choice, just like meat eating is a choice. I choose to eat meat, and frankly I dont feel guilty about it - even if it does come from factory farming conditions. If I go out and hunt and kill my food, I still get grief from the animal rights types, so Im damned if I do, damned if i don’t.
Once I learned about factory farming, about 20+ years ago, I became a vegan. I found it impossible to nourish my body on those of animals whose entire lives consist of unending suffering, whose every natural instinct is frustrated, and who are regarded not as living beings but as units of production.
Perhaps people have difficulty with animal rights issues because the image of these animals, who we all know experience fear, pain and suffering, brings to mind the horror of being utterly powerless, of being at the mercy of those who have no compassion of sympathy, of being regarded as having no intrinsic value or rights, but only as a thing to satisfy others’ needs or wants. I can’t think of anything more horrible or terrifying.
I live in Canada… in the middle of winter it gets to as low as -40 (c or f ) ..
I’m sorry but no amount of vegetables, by themselves, is going to supply the calories i need to keep warm outside.
Ever hear of a vegetarian Eskimo?
But, i do not consume Meat as the MAIN part of my meal
Back in the not too distant past most meals consisted of lots of vegetables , potatoes salad greens etc, and a small portion of meat
now a meal seems to be a huge slab of meat with a few leaves of veggie as a garnish..there in lies the problem…
Balance between the food items on your plate will do more to rid us of the corporate pushed all meat diet we now seem to accept as normal
Can’t we breed, then Treat corporate COO’s&CEO’s, in the exact/same fashion — and, maybe make some ’strange-soup’ for our benighted school lunchroom-programs (that doesn’t involve eating dangerous/half-dead moo-moo’s)?
[After all — “you are what you eat”, so eating Corporate-heads should give our inner-city kids a needed ‘helping-hand’ up that fabled “ladder of Success” — right?).
“Eat the Rich” used to be my fav bumper-sticker in the late-1960’s (but Clinton gave it a whole/new-’spin’ after Monica, darn-it).
I personally do not eat store eggs, I have a flock of a dozen chickens who roam my yard and lay enough eggs to keep me, my 5 adult children and, their spouses and children, in plenty of eggs, plus a few others who fight over who gets my chickens eggs first. I have a rooster, so the eggs are fertile and I usually let a hen or 2 set their eggs for baby chicks, not only are the eggs better but the chickens are an enjoyable part of my life. I also have 5 geese, they started laying eggs this year. It could get interesting on my little 1/2 acre this spring.
AngstOfThePeople, based on your not caring about factory farming conditions and your enthusiasm for jailing kids for life, you have my sympathy.
Another problem is that most people havnt even heard of battery cages and just buy the cheaspest eggs in the store without considering how much that small amount of money directly affects the lives of the birds enslaved to produce them.
Also if you have ever read lables there is egg in pretty much everything, even potato chips. The torture of chickens should be more widly advertised so people can at least make informed choices.
i say g.w. bush should declare war on chickens, AND eggs for that matter, unless they are first waterboarded. then they can roam free, while on camera.
Change zoning laws to allow backyard chickens. In many suburban neighborhoods, having chicken isn’t allowed , not even on larger lots.
I don’t know how to get consumers to care. We need to remember, there’s no such thing as a free .. nor a very cheap … lunch. Someone, somewhere pays for what we buy for cheap. The environment pays the price. Animals pay the price. Ultimately , we do.
I’d propose we teach courses on how to slaughter and eat your own chickens, too, for those who are not vegetarian. Many small farmers know to differentiate between their pet chicken who will live to a natural death and the rest of them, the ones one could eat.
but a “war on chickens” not only sounds cool, it’s a perfect waste of money!!!! PLUS, we might save a few souls..
let’s put this egg-thing behind us! we shouldn’t be clucking up the status quo! we shouldn’t fowl the already dirty waters!
stilldtreaming___What a great idea , to change zoning laws to allow chickens everywhere. Lets even go further and make a law that you cannot eat unless you raise your food from happy chickens in your back yard next to your organic garden with an eight foot high fence to keep out deer and coyotes who really like veggies and chickens. Then if you want milk you must also have a dairy cow who is happy to provide you milk while you take care of her. I believe the city folks would really like to try providing their own food to keep all the animals happy. They could shovel manure and carry feed instead of spending an hour at Starbucks sipping latte. That really appeals to me as that is the way I grew up. Now all we have to do is convince every one how much fun it will be to get rid of the factory farms and raise their own food or go hungry.
Kernel - It is easy to tell the country folks from the city folks. Maybe Starbucks should keep chickens out with the customers so they could enjoy the aroma.
Hey didn’t you know lying for profit is fair in the “good ol USA”??
Kernel, you git them latte-sippin city folk to contribute to the economy in such a way as to benefit the small farmers instead of drivin them off their farms.
rtdrury - My wife and I our successful small farmers and we don’t want to send our profits to Washington to be given to our lazy or stupid neighbors that won’t change their operations to more successful ones. Commodity crops are more efficiently grown on large acres with high mechanization. Success on a small farm means switching to more labor intensive crops. If they won’t get off their tractors and use their backs, maybe they should go to the city and collect welfare. Why should I support their lifestyle by paying them to stay in an inefficient business. This is as bad as bailing out the banks when they made bad loans. If its too hot, get out of the kitchen. If your so concerned about small farmers, send me your money.
Buy powdered eggs.
Kem - How do you dye your powdered Easter eggs?