Thursday, June 12, 2008

Sacrificing for Satisfaction

Imagine:
You're crammed inside a cage. You can't move around or move your arms and legs. There are rotting bodies all around you. Your skin is scratching off from the wires of the cage. Your nails have curled around the cage wires and you're trapped.

I'm pretty sure you've heard about Battery Cage Hens. Each hen is squashed inside metal cages, each with space about an A4 sized sheet of paper. These hens do not have any dust to bathe in, space to stretch their wings, or a quiet place to lay their eggs. The cages are in artifically lit sheds. They're trapped in there for their whole life.

The hens are fed food that make them lay eggs. The farmers turn the lights on in mornings, causing chickens to believe it is the beginning of a new day and making them lay an egg. When a full day has not passed, farmers trick the hens by shutting the lights for a few hours and turning them back on so the chickens can lay another egg.

Due to stress and boredom, the hens often peck(ed) each other. But not for long, because the farmers came up with the solution of cutting one third of their beak off. They are not given any pain reliever and it sometimes leads to shock and death. The hens' only escape is the slaughterhouse.

These chickens do not deserve to be treated this way. They sacrifice (well, they don't have a choice) their lives giving eggs for human consumption.

If you eat egg, only buy Free Range. You never know where those Cage Eggs have been. Some hens use dead chickens as nests to lay their eggs. Those eggs could roll out and end up in our supermarkets.