Hens

Whether eggs come from free-range, organic, cage-free, or simply battery farms, the level of violence and exploitation remains the same. Chickens are social, sensitive, and intelligent creatures. They possess a complex communication system, with over 25 specific clucks to communicate, and they use signals to grab attention. The unique communication skills of hens are comparable to those of certain primates. They are capable of solving complex problems, possess very good memories, and have emotions that influence their social behaviors; they recognize each other through their facial feathers, show empathy for individuals in danger, and even mourn the death of other birds. Chickens also have the ability to form emotional bonds with other species.

1. CHICK SORTING AND HATCHERY MANAGEMENT

In hatcheries, male and female chicks are sorted. Males are—much like male calves in the dairy industry—considered "waste" and are killed either by maceration, grinding, gassing, drowning, or suffocated in a bag. Females have their beak cut with heated blades and are shipped to the farm.

2. CONDITIONS IN INDUSTRIAL FARMS

Standard conditions in egg farms are atrocious. Practically all laying hens worldwide live in industrial farms, in long windowless sheds with stacked battery cages. More than 10 hens are crammed into a wire cage, often unable to spread their wings. Hens suffer from leg and claw deformations caused by wire mesh, injuries, diseases, and feather loss caused by physical and psychological stress. These overcrowding conditions and the accumulation of feces create a buildup of toxic gases, notably ammonia. Consequently, eye, viral, and upper respiratory tract infections are very common. Dozens of birds are often found dead and left uncollected.

3. MUTILATIONS AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Even in organic free-range farms, it is quite common to trim chicks' beaks using a razor blade, a hot blade, or an infrared laser at a temperature of over 800 °C. A hen's beak is a complex functional organ with significant innervation, equipped with receptors that send pain and danger messages. Following this procedure, many birds are unable to eat due to pain and die of dehydration, starvation, or weakened immune systems.

Others show signs of pain due to beak trimming (which alerts these birds to their natural stress response, such as feather pecking)—an operation almost always performed without any anesthesia, resulting in: pecking, decreased activity, social behavior disorders, and increased sleep time. Several biochemical and physiological changes occur in the rest of the beak after the section of several peripheral nerves in the damaged tissues, causing acute and chronic pain, persistent lethargy, protective behavior, reduced feeding, and the development of neuromas.

To produce an eggshell, a hen must mobilize nearly 10% of the calcium stored in her bones. Hens have a natural tendency to consume their eggs to replenish nutrients, but beak mutilation prevents this behavior.

4. BODILY EXHAUSTION AND FORCED HYPER-PRODUCTION

It is very common to starve hens to force their bodies into a rapid laying cycle for 5 to 14 days, three or four times. To maintain such annual egg production, a hen will use an amount of calcium greater than her entire skeleton (30 times more or even more). This is why laying hens generally suffer from bone fragility, fractures, debilitating osteoporosis, and even paralysis, because their bodies constantly lose more calcium to produce the shell than they absorb through diet. A large number of chickens suffer from fatty liver disease or fatty liver syndrome caused by the constant overworking of liver cells to produce the fats and proteins necessary for yolk manufacturing.

Repeatedly taking eggs prompts hens to lay more, which can damage their reproductive system. In the egg industry, they have been genetically modified and fed to lay 200 to 350 eggs per year, whereas naturally, unmodified hens would only lay about 20 eggs per year for reproductive purposes. Like female mammals, they have reproductive cycles and ovulate about 12 times a year. By interfering with the hen's natural process of brooding, protection, and nesting with her eggs, and constantly collecting them, their bodies instinctively respond by producing more eggs.

For hens, the production and laying process is a delicate and exhausting reproductive process. The physical consequences hens face from continuous laying are devastating. Since a chicken egg is designed to become a chick, it requires numerous nutrients, especially calcium, to form the shell. Ovarian prolapse and cancer caused by hyperactivity, as well as rapid aging of the reproductive system, are extremely common and cause premature death in laying hens. The same applies to survivors of the egg industry who have been lucky enough to live freely in a sanctuary on green grass and sunshine.

5. SLAUGHTER AND END OF LIFE

A chicken's life expectancy is 10 to 20 years. But in the egg industry, most hens are killed at a year and a half of age. After an average of 12 to 16 months of rapid production, when hens become too weak, too fragile to stand, or when their bodies are too exhausted to lay anymore, they are liquidated or sent to the slaughterhouse.

They are crammed into small crates, tossed into the back of a truck, and taken to the slaughterhouse, where they undergo brutal execution (in developed countries, this is usually done by plunging them into an electrical bath to inadequately stun them, then hoisting them upside down along a conveyor belt to have their throats slit). Many hens will remain fully conscious after having their throats slit and will subsequently be scalded alive. They usually end up in cans of soup, chicken stew, or other chicken products where their bodies are cut into small pieces to hide bruises and deformations from consumers.

Even in the best "humane," "organic," or "free" farms: as soon as egg production declines and it is no longer profitable to keep them alive, they are killed and their meat is sold. For the tens of thousands of chickens too deformed, lacking sufficient muscle tissue, or already dead from other elimination methods like live-bird grinding, gassing, or dumping in fields—a common industrial practice.

The egg industry also uses the "Jet Pro" system to turn profitable hens into animal feed. They take the birds and grind them into powder on-site with a portable grinder. The ground hens are placed into the "Jet Pro" extractor, then into the "Pellet Pro" pellet press. These pellets made from dead hens are then sold to feed livestock such as cows, pigs, and other chickens.