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The plight of animals raised for food is gaining more and more attention in the United States, and with good reason. More than 99 percent of the animals killed in the United States are those we eat, yet they have traditionally been the most ignored.
On November 5, 2002, Florida voters made history by passing the first-ever law protecting animals on U.S. factory farms. Prior to this landmark ballot initiative, which outlaws the cruel confinement of pregnant pigs in gestation crates so narrow they can’t even turn around, not a single U.S law existed which offered farmed animals any degree of protection from standard yet abusive industry practices. Indeed, there are still no laws regulating the treatment of hens who lay eggs, despite the fact that the conditions in which they must live are arguably more intensive than any other in animal agribusiness.
The overwhelming majority of eggs eaten in the United States come from hens who never see sunlight, never flap their wings, and never touch the earth. An average of eight—and sometimes more—hens are kept in “battery cages,” wire cages the size of filing drawers, stacked in tiers and running down aisles the length of one or two football fields.
Compassion Over Killing’s latest investigation, like other recent egg farm investigations, is intended to expose the cruelty inherent in commercial egg production and to ask consumers to take a stand against such abuse by refusing to buy eggs.
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