COK Egg Farm Investigation Leads to Criminal Charges of Animal Cruelty

On November 30, 2005, a COK undercover investigator started his first day of employment at Mount Joy, Pennsylvania’s Esbenshade Farms, one of the nation’s top egg producers. For the next two weeks, he painstakingly documented the daily horrors endured by hundreds of thousands of hens forced to spend their lives inside decrepit wire cages.

The conditions he captured on video while working at this egg factory farm—including birds with their wings, legs, or feet entangled in the wires of cages, still alive but unable to access food or water—were not only shocking, they provided the foundation for an unprecedented case of criminal cruelty to animals against a battery cage egg producer.

Here’s some of what the investigator witnessed while employed at Esbenshade Farms:

• birds impaled on the wires of the cages with many found already dead as a result of the painful immobilization,
• birds overcrowded in wire cages so small they could not spread their wings,
• hens left to suffer from untreated illnesses or injuries,
• birds with their wings, legs, or feet entangled in the wires of cages, unable to access food or water,
• injured or dying birds removed from their cages and left in the aisles without access to food or water, and
• hens living in cages amongst the decomposing bodies of other birds.

“One bird’s toe was caught between a wire bar and a metal clip. Another hen had somehow gotten her beak stuck between two wires on the floor of her cage.”

— COK Undercover Investigator

As reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the Associated Press’ national wire, and by television news programs, in January 2006, COK presented the video footage to a Lancaster County humane officer who agreed that the conditions were cruel and inhumane, and, as a result of the video documentation and other evidence, the owner and manager of the farm have each been charged with 35 counts of criminal animal cruelty. This case is still pending in court, as of this printing.

Working Undercover at a Battery Cage Egg Facility: 1 Farm * 7 Sheds * 500,000 Caged Birds

Each day the investigator was employed at Esbenshade Farms, he documented appalling conditions for hundreds of thousands of hens crammed inside battery cages. Below are excerpts from his daily log notes:

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

I arrived at the farm at 5:25 a.m. for my first day of work…. At no time today did I receive any verbal or written instructions about proper animal handling nor any protocols on what to do with injured or dying birds.

I noticed that most of the birds were de-beaked and overcrowded with as many as nine others in a single cage. Throughout the day, I removed approximately 300 dead birds from cages. I saw dead birds in various stages of decomposition in cages with live birds. Some were bloated and their skin had turned black. In order to remove one dead bird from a cage, I had to unhook the lower part of her beak that was speared on a loose wire hanging just above the cage.

The stench inside these houses was overpowering at times. In addition to the ammonia emitted from the manure pits below and the decomposing bodies inside many of the cages, there are many broken, rotting eggs. What seemed like thousands of flies swarmed inside the houses.

Thursday, December 1, 2005

Upon arriving at the farm this morning, I started removing dead birds from cages in house #5 and found a hen who appeared to be dying. Her cagemates were walking all over her, so I removed her from the cage and started carrying her to the end of the aisle intending to ask… a co-worker what to do with her. Before I reached the end of the aisle, however, she died in my arms.

Saturday, December 3, 2005

I removed nearly 100 dead birds from cages. In house #5, I found another dead bird hanging by her beak which had been pierced on a wire hook at the top of the cage. One bird’s toe was caught between a wire bar and a metal clip. Another hen had somehow gotten her beak stuck between two wires on the floor of her cage. She was unable to move.

Each worker here is responsible for monitoring between 120,000 to 170,000 hens every day. Even if we had no other duties, it would be impossible to check on each bird or even thoroughly look inside each cage.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

I removed 104 dead birds from cages, and nearly half of them were severely decomposed…. Many of these dead birds had their wings or feet entangled in the wires of the cage.

Thursday, December 8, 2005

[T]he rendering truck came to the farm to collect the dead birds we had pulled throughout the previous week. There were so many dead birds to be picked up this time that the truck had to make two trips.

Visit COK.net to learn more about this investigation and to watch clips from the undercover video.

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