Published Letters and Op-Eds from
COK’s Writers Group

A Critical Look at Animal Welfare in the Egg Industry

By Paul Shapiro
Published in Feedstuffs on October 25, 2004

Some Background

Dr. Temple Grandin, one of the country's foremost experts on farmed animal welfare, recounted a trip she had recently made to an egg farm:

"When I visited a large egg layer operation and saw old hens that had reached the end of their productive life, I was horrified. Egg layers bred for maximum egg production and the most efficient feed conversion were nervous wrecks that had beaten off half their feathers by constant flapping against the cage....The more I learned about the egg industry the more disgusted I got. Some of the practices that had become "normal" for this industry were overt cruelty. Bad had become normal. Egg producers had become desensitized to suffering." (1)

Likewise, when the United Egg Producers (UEP) announced it was taking voluntary steps to improve the welfare of egg-laying hens, many animal advocates were encouraged and eager to see the new guidelines. However, when they were finally released in 2002, disappointment was the near-universal reaction.

With the exception of cage space, the UEP's guidelines do little more than codify what has long been the industry norm. The guidelines do not prohibit the purposeful starvation of hens, do not prohibit "beak trimming" without painkiller, and recommend barren cages devoid of any enrichment. This is a clear indication that the "Animal Care Certified" logo now appearing on egg cartons has more to do with public relations and averting potential regulation than with meaningfully improving animal welfare.

The Better Business Bureau Case

Feedstuffs readers are likely aware that the Better Business Bureau has now twice ruled the "Animal Care Certified" logo is misleading because it conveys a message to consumers that these birds are afforded a higher level of care than is actually the case. When it became clear the UEP was not prepared to significantly alter its logo, the BBB referred the case to the Federal Trade Commission for potential legal action against the UEP. Simply put, few reasonable consumers consider keeping hens in cages so restrictive they can't even flap their wings to be good "animal care."

The lesson for agribusiness to take from the BBB case is not that there's little incentive to improve animal welfare. Rather, it's that using false advertising to grossly overstate minimal welfare changes doesn't pay.

The Science

Dr. Joy Mench, who sat on the UEP's advisory council for its welfare guidelines, which recommend 67 square inches of cage space per bird, calls that amount of space "meager":

"The recommended space allowance for laying hens in some countries is 60-80 square inches per hen, barely enough for the hen to turn around and not enough for her to perform normal comfort behaviors; however, many hens are allowed less than even that meager amount." (2)

Revealingly, Dr. Mench and fellow UEP committee member Dr. Janice Swanson wrote that "a different decision about the minimum recommendation would have been reached had the committee given more weight to the information from the preference testing and use of space studies, since these indicate that hens need and want more space than 72 square inches." (3)

While 67 square inches of space per hen is certainly better than the previous norm of 48, the restrictive, barren battery cages still prevent egg-laying hens from engaging in natural behaviors such as wing flapping, nesting, and roosting. Drs. Mench and Swanson cite a study which found that laying hens need an average of 303 square inches just to flap their wings. (4) The new UEP guidelines recommend less than a quarter of that amount of space.

Lack of space is not the only welfare problem under the UEP guidelines. Battery hens also suffer from beak trimming, forced molting through starvation, and lack of nesting opportunity. Avian expert Dr. Ian Duncan writes, "There is now good morphological, neurophysical, and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads to both chronic and acute pain." (5) On starvation-induced molting he writes, "[T]he evidence suggests that hens suffer enormously during forced molting." (6) And Dr. Michael Baxter writes, "[T]he frustration of nesting motivation is likely to cause significant suffering to the hen during the prelaying period every day."(7)

The Broader Picture

As consumers learn more about where their food comes from, animal welfare is becoming a subject of broad concern. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 62 percent of Americans support passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farmed animals. A 2002 ballot initiative in Florida outlawing the use of gestation crates for mother pigs and the recent ban of force-feeding ducks and geese for foie gras in California are indications of the growing public opposition to standard yet abusive production practices.

Sadly, the egg industry is still farthest behind in animal welfare. After calling the new UEP guidelines "too weak," Dr. Grandin went on further to state, "Some of these people have forgotten a hen is a live animal….This is what happens when people get totally desensitized to suffering." (8) On a later date, Dr. Grandin asserted, "This is absolutely totally awful….If cattle and pigs looked like these hens, I don't think any rancher would say that's OK." (9)

If the egg industry is interested in reducing welfare-related criticism, the first step it should take is to phase out battery cages. Dr. Lesley Rogers, author of The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken, writes of battery cages: "In no way can these living conditions meet the demands of a complex nervous system designed to form a multitude of memories and make complex decisions."(10)

Even with the new guidelines, egg-laying hens are still the most intensively confined of all farmed animals in the United States. It's up to egg producers to change this reality by taking truly significant steps to improve animal welfare, something we are still waiting to see.

Paul Shapiro is campaigns director for Compassion Over Killing, an animal advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

References

1. Temple Grandin, "Corporations Can Be Agents of Great Improvements in Animal Welfare and Food Safety and the Need for Minimum Decent Standards." A paper presented at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture on April 4, 2001. http://www.grandin.com/welfare/corporation.agents.html.
2. David Fraser, Joy Mench, Suzanne Millman. "Farm Animals and Their Welfare in 2000," State of the Animals 2001, Humane Society Press, 2001, p. 90.
3. Joy Mench, Janice Swanson. "Developing Science-Based Animal Welfare Guidelines." A speech delivered at the 2000 Poultry Symposium and Egg Processing Workshop. http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/pubs.htm.
4. Ibid.
5. Ian J. Duncan. "The Science of Animal Well-Being." A report from a speech in the Animal Welfare Information Center Newsletter, National Agriculture Library, 1993 (Jan.-March): 4.1, p. 5. As cited in Karen Davis' Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs (Book Publishing Company, 1996, p. 68).
6. Ian J. Duncan. "Thirty Years of Progress in Animal Welfare Science," Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1998: 1, pp. 151-154.
7. Michael R. Baxter. "The Welfare Problems of Laying Hens in Battery Cages," The Veterinary Record 1994: 134, p. 618.
8. Todd Hartman, "A fix in the henhouse," Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 16, 2002.
9. Temple Grandin, Ph.D., Alberta Farm Animal Care Conference, Olds College, 29 November, 2002.
10. Lesley J. Rogers. "The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken." (Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1995, p. 218).