Ohio Fresh Eggs follows the "United Egg Producers Certified" guidelines, which allow producers to cram hens into battery cages. UEP's meager standards allow practices that experts say cause unnecessary suffering--including crowding birds into barren cages with no opportunity to nest, roost, dustbathe, or touch earth.

Statements by Poultry Experts & Veterinarians Regarding Conditions at Ohio Fresh Eggs

Ian Duncan, Ph.D.

Dr. Duncan on Battery Cages(2)
(UEP guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)

  • "Hens in battery cages are prevented from performing several natural behaviour patterns. ... The biggest source of frustration is undoubtedly the lack of nesting opportunity."(3)

  • "The lack of physical space may actually prevent them from adopting certain postures or performing particular behaviours."(4)

  • "[T]he difficulty of inspecting cages means that the welfare of the birds is at some risk."(5)

  • "The lack of space in battery cages reduces welfare by preventing hens from adopting certain postures such as an erect posture with the head raised and performing particular behaviors such as wing flapping."(6)

  • "Battery cages for laying hens have been shown (by me and others) to cause extreme frustration particularly when the hen wants to lay an egg. Battery cages are being phased out in Europe and other more humane husbandry systems are being developed."(7)

Dr. Duncan on "Beak Trimming"
(UEP guidelines recommend "beak trimming" without painkiller.)

  • "There is now good morphological, neurophysical, and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads to both chronic and acute pain."(8)

  • "[Beak trimming] has been shown (by me and by others) to cause both acute and chronic pain and should not be allowed to be carried out routinely. It has been banned in some European countries and they have shown that it is possible to keep hens without de-beaking them."(9)

Joy Mench, Ph.D.

Dr. Mench on Battery Cages
(UEP guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)

Note: Dr. Mench sat on the UEP's advisory committee for its animal welfare guidelines, which recommend 67 square inches of cage space per bird for white laying hens, an amount of space Dr. Mench calls "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."(12)

  • "Battery cages provide an inadequate environment for nesting, lacking both sites which fit these criteria [concealment and separation from other birds] as well as substrates for nest-building. Hens housed in battery cages display agitated pacing and escape behaviors which last for 2 to 4 hours prior to oviposition."(13)

  • "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."(14)

Dr. Mench on "Beak Trimming"
(UEP guidelines recommend "beak trimming" without painkiller.)

  • "There is mounting evidence that beak trimming also results in behavioral and neurophysiological changes indicative of acute and chronic pain. ... Both beak trimmed chicks and adults display difficulty in grasping and swallowing feed even when their pecking rates are high."(15)

Mench: "Chickens explore their environment with their beaks. They like to pick things up, and that's their main way of exploring and touching and feeling things."

NPR: "So, cutting off the beak is a big deal, if you're a hen?"

Mench: "It's definitely a big deal."(16)

Lesley J. Rogers, Ph.D.

Dr. Rogers on Battery Cages
(UEP guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)

Referring to battery cages, Dr. Rogers writes:

  • "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."(19)

Dr. Rogers on Chickens

  • "With increased knowledge of the behaviour and cognitive abilities of the chicken, has come the realization that the chicken is not an inferior species to be treated merely as a food source."(20)

Michael Baxter, Ph.D.

Dr. Baxter on Battery Cages
(UEP guidelines recommend barren battery cages.)

  • "The space available in a battery cage does not allow hens even to stand still in the way they would in a more spacious environment. Some behaviours are completely inhibited by confinement in a cage causing a progressive accumulation of motivation to perform the behaviours."(21)

  • "When crowded together this regulatory system breaks down and the hens appear to be in a chronic state of social stress, perpetually trying to get away from their cagemates, not able to express dominance relations by means of spacing and not even able to resolve social conflict by means of aggression."(22)

  • "[T]he frustration of nesting motivation is likely to cause significant suffering to the hen during the prelaying period every day."(23)

  • "Hens without access to perches may have more welfare problems resulting from increased aggression, reduced bone strength, impaired foot condition and higher feather loss."(24)

  • "The fact that hens are restricted from exercising to such an extent that they are unable to maintain the strength of their bones is probably the greatest single indictment of the battery cage. The increased incidence of bone breakage which results is a serious welfare insult."(25)

Michael Appleby, Ph.D.

Dr. Appleby on the UEP Guidelines

  • "We believe the egg industry still has a long way to go before they can claim to be treating animals humanely. ... The proposal put forth recognizes that animal welfare is a consideration, but it fails to address the worst abuses that are standard practice in the egg industry."(26)

Temple Grandin, Ph.D.

Dr. Grandin on the UEP guidelines:

  • "Some of these people have forgotten a hen is a live animal," Grandin said. "This is what happens when people get totally desensitized to suffering."

    Grandin said the industry is still held back by old-guard, animals-as-machines views that are standing in the way of more progressive approaches. She said in many cases, hens are still crammed so tight in cages they can't lie down. (27)

Dr. Grandin on the Egg Industry

  • "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. ...

    "Some egg producers got rid of old hens by suffocating them in plastic bags or dumpsters. 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.

    "There is a point where economics alone must not be the sole justification for an animal production practice. When the egg producers asked me if I wanted cheap eggs I replied, 'Would you want to buy a shirt if it was $5 cheaper and made by child slaves?' Hens are not human but research clearly shows that they feel pain and can suffer."(28)

Dr. Grandin on Male Chicks
(UEP guidelines are silent on male chicks.)

  • "One of first things she did was tour a chicken hatchery. She asked a worker what he did with the boxes of culled baby chicks. She was told the worker who looked after them was on vacation.

    'Ya sure,' I said. 'I know what you're doing with them and it's going to stop,'" she said.

    "They were throwing live animals in the dumpster to get rid of them. I was going 'What? They were doing what?' Nobody would throw a live calf in a dumpster. These people forgot this is a live animal."(29)

Eric Dunayer, DVM

Dr. Dunayer on the UEP Guidelines

  • "In the end, the UEP's guidelines do little more than codify already present industry practices. The proposed increase in space allotted to each chicken is both insignificant and falls well short of the area a chicken needs to carry out her normal behaviors."(30)

The Humane Society of the United States

  • "The United Egg Producers is not tackling the systematic abuses within the industry that severely compromise the welfare of individual birds. ... [The UEP guidelines] seem designed more to mollify consumers than to address the extreme animal welfare abuses that have become the norm in this industry."(32)

References

  1. Lesley J. Rogers. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. (Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1995, p. 218).
  2. Dr. Duncan also has some positive comments on the welfare of hens in battery cages, mainly that they are more hygienic than production systems which group thousands of birds together on a floor, as is practiced by many so-called “cage-free” egg facilities. As well, hens seem to prefer to live in smaller groups of birds than in much larger ones containing thousands of birds, as is the practice of many “cage-free” but not necessarily truly free-range commercial egg facilities.
  3. Ian J. Duncan. “The Pros and Cons of Cages,” World’s Poultry Science Journal 2001: 57, p. 385.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid., p. 383.
  6. Ian J. Duncan. “Thirty Years of Progress in Animal Welfare Science,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1998: 1, pp. 151-154.
  7. Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
  8. 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).
  9. Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
  10. Ian J. Duncan. “Thirty Years of Progress in Animal Welfare Science,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1998: 1, pp. 151-154.
  11. Ian J. Duncan. Letter dated June 25, 2003, to Dr. Nancy Halpern, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
  12. David Fraser, Joy Mench, Suzanne Millman. “Farm Animals and Their Welfare in 2000,” State of the Animals 2001, Humane Society Press, 2001, p. 93-94.
  13. Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 112.
  14. 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.
  15. Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 117.
  16. “McDonald’s & Farming,” National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program aired on April 15, 2002. http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1141753.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Joy A. Mench. “The Welfare of Poultry in Modern Production Systems,” Poultry Science Reviews 4: p. 112.
  19. Lesley J. Rogers. The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken. (Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International, 1995, p. 218).
  20. Ibid., p. 213.
  21. Michael R. Baxter. “The Welfare Problems of Laying Hens in Battery Cages,” The Veterinary Record 1994: 134, p. 617.
  22. Ibid., p. 618.
  23. Ibid., p. 618.
  24. Ibid., p. 615.
  25. Ibid., p. 618.
  26. HSUS press release entitled, “HSUS Says Egg Industry Guidelines Don't Go Far Enough,” June 27, 2002. http://www.hsus.org/ace/14515.
  27. Todd Hartman, "A fix in the henhouse," Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 16, 2002.
  28. Temple Grandin, Ph.D. “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.
  29. Mary MacArthur. “Analyst Says Poultry Growers Oblivious to Poor Conditions,” Western Producer, Dec. 12, 2002.
  30. Eric Dunayer, DVM. Letter dated May 8, 2003, regarding new UEP guidelines. Click here for the full letter.
  31. Christopher Patterson, DVM. Letter dated June 8, 2003, regarding new UEP guidelines. Click here for the full letter.
  32. HSUS press release entitled, “HSUS Says Egg Industry Guidelines Don't Go Far Enough,” June 27, 2002. http://www.hsus.org/ace/14515.
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