Enter the Chicken Knapper

by Miyun Park

Herbivore, Issue #2, pages 14-16

Once upon a time, there was a little yellow girl named Miyun who was so shy didn't correct people when they mispronounced her name. She was so timid that she peed in her pants in kindergarten rather than draw attention to herself by raising her hand for permission to walk across the classroom to the potty. She was afraid of the dark, being outside, people she didn't know, and, mostly, getting into trouble. Like all good Korean girls, she did as she was told, practiced lots of piano, and avoided like the plague doing anything wrong. Her earliest memories were of the entire fam watching "Sesame Street" together to learn English, crawling across the street on her hands and knees for fear of falling whilst wearing her first pair of roller skates, and crying through the entire harrowing week of Girl Scout camp. (Did you know it's pitch black outside at night?!)

At any rate, I managed to cringe my way through school, tooling around on an old Vespa and feeling out of sorts. My slanty eyes were open enough to know there were all sorts of oppression, depression, and repression all around me, but I tried my best to ignore it all. After all, what could I do about any of it?

Then came one day in April 1990. I got an unsolicited brochure on the way those animals we call food were treated in factory farms. I read the entire pamphlet and was sufficiently outraged to be sad but insufficiently motivated to do anything, let alone consider changing my palate preferences. I figured I was doing enough by donating $10 to the World Wildlife Fund for the pandas (and the free tote bag I never received). So I tossed the brochure and went to a fast-food joint with some friends. While standing in line to order my favorite cheeseburger and milkshake, I couldn't get the images of factory-farmed animals out of my head. I turned on my go-go boot heel and ran out to the parking lot where I like to say I purged myself of animal-abusing habits because that sounds a lot better than saying I puked.

Fast forward to 2001. I'd been vegan for 11 years and worked "full-time" in the animal advocacy movement for seven. I was still afraid of the dark and the outdoors, but had squelched fears of upsetting my parents and other persons of authority and had progressed nicely from my early days of merely mouthing chants at demonstrations to wielding a megaphone. Still, if anyone had predicted that one day I'd spend nights crawling around in chicken manure with cameras around my neck (yes, another lovely Asian stereotype made true to life), videotaping and photographing unbelievable cruelty inside factory egg farms, and then leaving with hens rescued from battery cages, I would have asked for a refund because she was no Miss Cleo.

But that's exactly what my coverall-clad self started doing in the spring of 2001.

With other Compassion Over Killing (COK) investigators, I've made my way into many egg farms, documenting conditions abusive enough to convince hundreds if not thousands of consumers to leave eggs out of their shopping carts. In the past two years, we've completed five investigations and rescued 30 hens from battery cages. We've given them their first visits with veterinarians, their first chances to flap their wings, build a nest, feel the earth under their feet, and the sun on their backs. Our strategy is a bit of a departure from clandestine animal rescues, as we videotape ourselves—unmasked—freeing them. Then, we go to the authorities, tell them what we've uncovered, and ask that the factory farm be prosecuted for cruelty. The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, New York Times, Associated Press, and more than 75 other press outlets have run stories reporting the horrific findings of our investigations.

Break to infomercial: The incredible, edible egg is brought to our grocer's refrigerated section courtesy of about 300 million hens—one for nearly each American—stuffed inside battery cages, wire cages about the size of a filing cabinet drawer. Each hen sleeps, eats, drinks, lays eggs, and defecates in roughly the space of half a letter-sized sheet of paper. She never sees sunlight, never touches earth, never breathes fresh air, and never roosts, dust bathes, raises her young, nests, forages, or even freely flaps her wings. And when her battered body is too weary to produce enough eggs to be considered profitable, she is intentionally starved for up to two weeks, until she loses 30 percent of her body weight, thereby jarring her body into yet another laying cycle—or she's killed to make room for another shedful of hens.

Death is expected in animal agribusiness, which views an 11-percent mortality rate as acceptable. So, our footage of life in a battery cage is nothing more than day-in, day-out standard business to the egg industry: countless rotting corpses left in cages with live hens; chickens with legs, wings, feet, and necks stuck in the wires of the cages, unable to free themselves and left to die of dehydration just inches away from food and water; hens who had escaped their cages only to fall into the manure pits below to roam aimlessly, far from the waterers in the cages above; and animals riddled with cysts, infections, prolapsed uteruses, and near-featherless bodies.

How can this happen? Factory farmers view hens as widgets and treat them as disposable egg production units. Legislators don't afford them any protection under federal regulations. Finally and conclusively, the consumers don't do anything about the plight of hens and others trapped in the cogs of animal agribusiness simply because they haven't yet been shown what factory farmers so desperately try to hide. How can Joe Six-Pack and Jane Soccer-Mom "just say no" to animal abuse when industry does such a good job of keeping it hidden?

The first step is to show the public what animal farming really looks like. Long gone are images of Foghorn Leghorn sidling up to some cheeky lass of a hen in a barnyard, sun shining and fluffy, yellow chicks running underfoot. In slams the reality of modern egg production. Not only can animal agribusiness do pretty much whatever they want to these hens (and, trust me, they do), they can't even talk about these animals as sentient individuals capable of feeling pain and suffering. Like federal legislation, industry journals have their own sort of language. Research articles of animal scientists put words like "feels" in quotation marks and talk about "learned helplessness." That is, when virtually every habit and behavior natural to an animal is frustrated—as they are for egg-laying hens in battery cages—she becomes despondent and may "give up."

How tragic is that? Pretty bad, by all counts. So, here's where I come in with my fellow COK investigators. Wearing biosecure gear, I put aside my fears and find myself somewhat regularly trekking through the ominous (and very dark) outdoors to factory egg farms. The stench welcomes us before the low, metal, windowless sheds appear in sight, as we ready ourselves to blow industry's cover because we all know that Kodak moments are precious, and video of animals suffering for our breakfasts is priceless in exposing what our penchant for scrambled eggs is doing to these birds.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of hens in a single row of a single shed, I think there's no way consumers can continue to support the cruelty inherent in the egg industry once these images are out. And, today, even with industry trade organization United Egg Producers' new "Animal Care Certified" sham of a program, individuals are seeing through the carefully crafted PR spin and realizing that the industry isn't doing much more to help the egg-laying hen than (possibly) giving her a wee bit more space in a still completely overcrowded cage. How do I know this? COK recently completely an undercover investigation into an "Animal Care Certified" facility and, you guessed it, documented the same animal abuse as at all the other factory farms. You can see photos from the investigation at EggScam.com.

We conducted a poll of egg consumers in the nation's capital and learned that the overwhelming majority bought into the UEP's scam and believed that hens laying "Animal Care Certified" eggs (housed in cartons proudly displaying the new ACC logo) were not intentionally starved (forced molted), did not have their beaks seared off with a hot blade while unanesthetized, and were not crammed into cages so tiny they can't even spread their wings. But, of course, there is little truth in labeling, as our footage so painfully shows.

Cracking our knuckles and gearing up for a challenge, on June 11, 2003, we filed petitions with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration accusing the UEP and its member producers of false and misleading advertising. Hopefully, for the sake of egg-laying hens, the authorities will act. Although they aren't likely to go to bat for chickens, perhaps they will step up for consumers who're getting suckered by the egg industry into buying "Animal Cruelty Certified" eggs.

While the complaint unfolds and the federal agencies do something, anything, we don't have to sit around and twiddle our opposable thumbs. We don't have to let the animals languish.

Luckily for the 300 million egg-laying hens stuck in battery cages this very moment, it doesn't have to be so utterly hopeless. Every single time we eat, we can make a difference for them and the other animals unfortunate enough to be called food, by choosing to leave them, their eggs, and their milk off our menus. And every single time we can, we speak up for them and let Jack and Diane know what animal agribusiness wants to keep secret. We have to kick-start ourselves to get more active because the one million animals slaughtered every single hour can't wait for us to ring in the new year and make becoming vegan our next resolution.

If you've made it through this whole article, wow. Let me ask just one more thing of you. Please make a pledge right now. If you're still eating animals, begin to explore veganism. If you need a little help to get on your way to eating fewer and fewer animal-unfriendly meals, request COK's free Vegetarian Starter Guide from TryVeg.com or 1-866-MEAT-FREE, and Easy Vegan Recipes from VegRecipes.org, and know the animals would thank you, if they could. If you're already vegan but your advocacy tendencies have gotten a little rusty, please lend your voice to those who need it most. Contact us at info@cok.net or visit our site at COK.net to learn what you can do. Don't let farmed animals suffer another day without your help. Believe me. If someone as timid as I can do it, you can, too.