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In the UK there are around 30 million hens producing 10,000 million eggs very year. 66% of these hens are kept in 'battery cages', 7% are kept in barns and 27% are 'free range'. (BEIS, 2005)

Since 2004 eggs have had to be labelled either as "eggs from caged hens"; "barn eggs" or "free range".

The Beginning - Chick Slaughter

Egg laying hens come from hatcheries where, eggs are laid by breeding hens. The eggs are taken away to develop inside giant industrial incubators. The chicks are then hatched inside the incubator drawers before being sent to the production line.

Once hatched, the newborn chicks pass down a production line to be sexed and sorted. Sick, weakly and useless male chicks are pulled out and thrown into giant sacks or crates. Some are crushed to death or suffocate. The chicks' next stop is either the gas chamber or the macerator. A macerator is a giant mincing machine - into which the chicks are tossed alive.

Others are just discarded like trash. Each year, approximately 30 million day old male chicks are 'disposed of'. They are an unwanted by-product of an already cruel industry regardless of whether you buy battery or free range eggs.

Debeaking

As often occurs with all other intensively-farmed animals, the stress of living in such unnatural, cramped conditions causes hens to behave aggressively towards one another. Hens frequently exhibit the abnormal habits of pecking at each other and pulling one another's feathers out. In extreme cases this can lead to cannibalism. In an attempt to curtail this behaviour, chicks are routinely subjected to the mutilation of debeaking.

The industry describes the practice as 'beak trimming' but it is much more than that. A sharp, hot blade will slice off the end of the chick's beak. Sometimes a chunk of face may be sliced off too as the birds are shoved without care into the slicing machine. Scientific evidence shows that hens not only feel pain at the time of the operation but can also suffer a lasting, chronic pain.

Eggs from caged hens - Battery Farms

At 18 weeks old a battery hen will arrive at the factory farm with thousands of others. They are housed in gigantic windowless sheds with thousands of hens who are crammed four or five at a time into small wire cages stacked on top of each other in rows. The cages are not much bigger than a microwave and each hen has the equivalent space of an A4 sheet of paper to live in.

Most battery egg farms are fully automated - everything from the lighting to the feeding, watering and egg collection is controlled automatically by a machine. The cage floors slope forward so that eggs roll on to a conveyor belt and are taken away to be boxed. In order to promote egg-laying, the sheds are artificially lit for approximately 17 hours each day.

Hens are often crushed to death by their cage-mates. The corpses of dead birds are not always removed as farm workers do not see them lying at the back of the cage. The top and bottom rows of cages, are particularly difficult to view because they are not at eye level. Battery farms are frequently staffed by only a few people in order to keep costs at a minimum. If enough staff were employed to enable each cage to be inspected properly every day, the battery system would no longer be financially-viable.

Below the cages are dunes of waste from the thousands of hens. It is a sorry sight, and many hens end up trapped down there after falling from their cages. They are left there to drown in their own waste without access to food and water and often get attacked by rats. The waste also forms in blocks around the hens feet and legs making it difficult to walk.

Barn Eggs

'Barn Eggs' are laid by hens who are are confined to a shed, often in cramped filthy conditions. The birds may be able to stretch their wings - which is better than the life of a battery hen- but they will never see daylight or breathe fresh air. They are still denied real freedom, space, comfort or the ability to exercise their natural instincts. Flock sizes can be huge, with some barns housing up to 16,000 birds. At the end of the day they are still intensively reared.

The name 'barn' is used to deliberately mislead the public into thinking the hens are kept in much nicer conditions in a nice cosy barn with fresh straw, but its anything but nice.

Free Range?

“Just because it says free-range does not mean that it is welfare-friendly.” (Dr. Charles Olentine, editor of Egg Industry magazine, an industry trade journal.)

The EU guidelines, state that in order for eggs to be labelled 'free range', the hens must have access to an outdoor range area, accessible through openings in the sides of a barn. The barn can be stocked at a density of 12 hens per m2, and the total opening between the barn and the outside must not be less than 2m per 1000 hens. Farmers with fewer than 350 birds in their flock are exempt from the Welfare Directive (unless their eggs are sold graded as Class A).

The reality is that 'free range' hens are often kept in 'barn'-type sheds in flocks of up to 16,000. In large-scale free range units, often fewer than 50% of the birds regularly go outside. Some barns, only have doors down one side so the hens at the back of the barn are unlikely ever to be able to pick their way through. Free range hens are frequently debeaked, and, as with all laying hens, they are usually slaughtered after one year of egg production.

Health Problems

Factory-farmed hens lay eggs five or six times a week. The hens become highly stressed and aggressive during the pre-laying period because of lack of privacy and nesting materials. When an egg is produced, the hen's vent becomes distended, red and moist, attracting the attention of bored and frustrated birds. Vent pecking can occur, and even lead to cannibalism.

Brittle Bones

The unnaturally high level of egg production also contributes to osteoporosis as calcium is drained from the hens' bodies for the production of egg shells, often leading to severe osteopenia.

Battery hens suffer Caged Layer Osteoporosis (CLO), or brittle bones. Research has shown that 35% of premature deaths in cages are due to CLO, a slow death from paralysis and starvation at the back of the cage.

Injured Feet

Confined to the cage, the hen is unable to forage by scratching and pecking at the ground. Denied this simple activity, the hen's claws can grow long or twisted and be torn off; or even grow around the wire mesh of the sloping cage floor. The slope itself puts painful pressure on the hen's toes, causing damage to the bird's feet.
 
Tumours

Another welfare problem associated with pushing hens to lay increasing numbers eggs is the development of malignant tumours of the oviduct. In one investigation, a significant proportion of malignant tumours of the oviduct were identified in 20,000 'spent' layers selected from ten different farms.

'Spent Hens'

Most egg-laying hens (including free range) are slaughtered at around 72 weeks of age, because, as their egg production drops, they are not considered profitable enough to keep alive.

The transport and slaughter of hens is an incredibly traumatic experience. Once caught, the hens are held upside down, several per hand, and carried out to be packed into crates for transport. Rough handling and complete disregard for their welfare often leads to them breaking bones in the process. One study found that at the time of catching and crating, levels of the stress hormone corticosterone in battery hens were ten times higher than normal.

Almost a third of battery hens arriving at the slaughterhouse have at least one freshly-broken bone. Removing the birds from the crates and hanging them upside down to await slaughter increases the proportion of hens with broken bones to 45%.

The slaughter process for hens is the same as for all poultry: they are shackled upside down, dunked into an electrified waterbath to stun them, dragged past either a slaughterman with a knife or an automatic rotating blade to have their throats slit, and then dipped into a 'scalding tank' to loosen their feathers. Birds may 'swan neck' (raise their heads) causing them to miss the stun bath and may have their throats cut whilst fully conscious. Some birds may not have their throats cut properly, meaning they are still alive when they enter the scalding tank. 'Spent' hens can be worth as little as two pence per bird. Their carcasses will be used in cheap products such as chicken soups, pastes, pies, pet food, etc.
 
The Environment

Farming hens for their eggs is a huge waste of resources. It takes 3 kilos of grain (in the form of chicken feed) to produce one kilo of eggs. This is because the conversion of crops by farm animals into food for humans is grossly inefficient. And it is not only food (grain) that is wasted. Each battery egg takes approximately 180 litres of water to produce. This is a shocking statistic considering the volumes of water human beings use in developing countries: in India, for example, the poorest people use an average of only 10 litres of water each per day.

Studies of farm animal housing have shown that egg farms have one of the highest farm emission rates of ammonia gas, a serious environmental pollutant linked to acid rain.

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