The Dharma

Chicken Concentration Camps

Industrywide, hens are given an average of only 48 square inches of space (6 inches by 8 inches—about half the size of a standard sheet of paper) each, since up to eight birds are crammed into each tiny battery cage. Filthy sheds reeking of ammonia contain as many as 100,000 birds each. At the end of their lives, the animals' bodies are so worn out that they're considered useless for anything but cat food, if they're even usable for that. The conditions are so horrible that, on average, more than one in seven of the animals die annually. Often, the rotting corpses are left to decompose among the live hens. At a bare minimum, each hen requires 72 square inches of space with the ultimate goal of phasing out battery cages altogether.
Unable to establish a "pecking order," build a nest, or do much else, hens often go insane under these cramped conditions and attack each other. Rather than making conditions more tolerable, the industry response is to "debeak" the hens by searing their beaks off with a hot blade. The debeaking process is very painful and can cause hens to starve to death when eating becomes too painful. In the eyes of the industry, "Cages are expensive, but hens are cheap." The practice of debeaking must be eliminated.
To get as many eggs as possible, the egg industry often "force-molts" hens, meaning that hens are starved (and sometimes have their water consumption restricted) for up to 14 days in order to force them to begin another egg-laying cycle. During this process, many of the animals will starve to death. Hens will lose most of their feathers and up to 30 percent of their bodyweight during the forced molt. The process is so abusive that it's illegal in most developed countries and has been banned by McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's.
Chicken-catchers routinely break bones as they gather hens from cages and sling them into crates for transport to slaughter. Hens are grabbed by the legs and handled so violently that many suffer painful hemorrhaging before they make it to the slaughterhouse. Egg suppliers consider hens who can no longer produce eggs quickly enough to be completely worthless, and they have to figure out what to do with the so-called "spent hens." In order to avoid paying to have them shipped away, some egg suppliers bury the birds alive as a method of disposal.
Hens usually live in windowless sheds amid the stench of their own feces and urine. In these densely packed factory farms, manure piles release toxic ammonia, which harms both humans and chickens. Unlike humans, chickens have no relief from the toxic agents—chickens exposed to ammonia suffer from chronic respiratory diseases, weakened immune systems, bronchitis, and "ammonia burn," a painful condition of the eye that can lead to blindness. Air-quality guidelines for chickens should limit ammonia exposure to 5 to 10 parts per million.
To ensure that hens do not suffer for weeks or months on end, inspections should allow adequate time to evaluate each animal's welfare, remove animals from manure pits, and so on. All facilities should have well-planned euthanasia procedures for sick and injured animals, as well as a plan for emergencies such as natural disasters. Click here to read about a natural disaster that was catastrophic for close to 1 million hens.
A truly "free range" system should be phased in—animals should be allowed to live their lives breathing fresh air, fulfilling their desires, and doing what comes naturally to them. Packing thousands of hens into sheds, as many so-called "cage-free" systems do, can be even worse for hens than cages (see above information about chickens and turkeys raised for food ). Hens require a nesting area, a sunning area, shelter, and plenty of food and fresh water that is spread out enough to prevent the birds from fighting over it.

~ Back to The Dharma ~