Taking Action…

This past weekend, I attended the fourth annual Taking Action for Animals conference in Arlington, Virginia. This conference is run by the Humane Society of the United States. An animal protection group whose president and CEO accepts a salary six figures large, and is responsible for the introduction of “cage free” egg standards in the United States. For those of you unfamiliar with “cage free” eggs, allow me to explain them.

Chickens used for egg laying purposes spend their entire lives in what are known as battery cages. These cages are stacked on top of one another in vast, dark warehouses (access to light is believed to heighten the bird’s stress levels) in which over a million birds can be kept. A single battery cage can house anywhere from 4-8 birds. Inside the cage, each chicken is afforded the total living space that about equals the size of a standard sheet of paper. The wingspan of a chicken is approximately 30 inches. If a hen were alone in a battery cage, it still wouldn’t be wide enough for her to fully extend her wings. When you consider the large number of other chickens housed in the same cage, the possibility of each hen even being able to move freely from one portion of the cage to another is very unlikely. Most chickens spend so much of their lives in one area of the cage that reports of chickens fusing to the metal bars are quite common.

Chickens are proven to exist in very complex social structures, each chicken inhabiting a specific place in the pecking order (where that term is derived from). As many as 80 birds can live together harmoniously within this heirarchy. However, when more than 80 hens are introduced into a social order they can become chaotic, stressed, violent, and cannabalistic. This stress is added to the mounting anxiety of their intensive confinement, and denial of other natural behaviors including nesting, roosting, dust bathing, and scratching the dirt for food. When these factors combine, chickens in these conditions will fight with each other sometimes to the death, and always with extreme injury. To protect profits in light of this problem, the egg and poultry industry came up with a procedure known as de-beaking, where they literally sever the tip of the bird’s beak with a hot blade so they will not mutilate each other as badly when they fight. This procedure is done without anesthesia and is a routine cause of death in many animals. Despite the millions of birds who die from the procedure, the billions of birds who are raised every year make the practice more profitable than giving the birds more room and adequate surroundings.

Chickens have a life span exceeding eight years, but these birds live such stressful lives that their bodies are entirely worn out by age two. At this time, they will be sent to slaughter. Since they have spent their lives in such wretched conditions, their flesh is often bruised and scarred, making it unappealing to consumers. Instead, the meat from these birds will be sold for products where the bruising can be easily disquised – chicken nuggets, frozen foods, school lunches, and pet food. The birds who are entirely “unsalvageable” will be ground alive and fed to the birds still confined in the cages, or fed to livestock.

90% of all land animals killed for food each year in the US are chickens. 95% of those birds come from intensive confinement systems. These are not isolated incidents.

The obvious response to this issue is to stop eating eggs. Chicken eggs belong to chickens, they don’t belong to people. Forcing these birds into slavery to satisfy our taste for them does not change this fundamental fact. However, many people will still try relentlessly to find some way to continue getting what they want, whether it defies all ethical reasoning or not (for more examples of our affinity for selfishness, please see The Iraq War, Corporate Tax Breaks, NAFTA, and everyone’s favorite pet cause Global Warming)

Like I was saying, some people will do anything to avoid changing their behavior. Laziness is a disease so pervasive that some people will devote their entire careers to protecting their right to do nothing. Here we have the introduction of “cage free” standards. A collection of rules so loose, that not a single independent agency has been assigned to enforce them. The USDA only addresses concerns over product labeling if they relate to public health and safety. The terms “free range” and “cage free” therefore are employed liberally and without discretion by anyone who wishes to use them. According to multiple independent reports

“There is no independent verification of claims on meat and poultry labels regarding the terms “cage free” and “free range”. Preapproval of labeling claims is based on producer testimonials only”

The basic standards that some companies claim to adhere to involve limited access to sunshine, pasture, and fresh air for a certain length of time each day, usually between five and 15 minutes a day. If you have a warehouse with one million birds in it, it’s unlikely you will take them outside for 15 minutes each day and bring them back in again. It is equally unlikely that you will house them outside permanently where they are subject to inclimate weather, predation, and hindered egg collection procedures. What most companies will actually do is open the door to the warehouse for 15 minutes a day and record that the birds received their dose of “access” to fresh air and sunshine.

Any large scale company claiming to adhere to “cage free” standards is lying. It’s impossible. Lucky for them, they’re not encumbered by the obligation to tell the truth anyway.

What some companies are doing is exchanging the battery cage system for open floor plans where the birds are no longer in cages, but they are still packed so tightly across the floor that the same problems continue to persist. No limits are currently placed on animal density or flock size under the “free range” or “free roaming” label.” According to the Humane Society’s own website

“Most cage-free hens live in very large flocks that can consist of many thousands of hens who never go outside”

I have a lot of problems with the idea of “humane” animal products (another post entirely) but in this particular arena, I find it wholly offensive that the Humane Society – the nation’s largest animal protection organization would be touting “cage free” eggs as an alternative to battery eggs, when clearly, there is no discernable difference between the two.

As I said before, people don’t need any help convincing themselves not to change their habits. By allowing people to believe that they can simply buy a product with a different label on it while remaining openly aware of the fact that these labels in no way guarantee the treatment they imply is irresponsible, wrong, and about as far from being in the best interest of these animals as I can even imagine.

If you would like to tell the Humane Society what you think of their staggaring failure of judgement, you may do so here

~ by Reno on July 22, 2008.