June, Germany.
received anonymously via email:
“When people think about eggs, most initially think of their breakfast or baking – a chickens egg is often euphemistically referred to as e.g. “breakfast egg”.
Laying hens are bred to produce nearly an egg a day – far beyond what their bodies would have naturally evolved to do. Their reproductive systems are pushed to the limit, their lives reduced to cramped, filthy cages or halls, often shared with tens of thousands of others. There is no daylight. The air is thick with dust and ammonia. Ventilation systems roar constantly. Many hens develop painful inflammations in their cloaca – organ where eggs pass through – and some simply collapse under the strain of production. These are not exceptions. They are routine and calculated in by the industry!
In the midst of this manufactured misery, seven animal rights activists in Germany stepped into action and entered an industrial egg facility under cover of darkness. Inside were roughly 40,000 hens, most of them silent, some featherless, almost all of them showing signs of sickness. From this bleak battery, the activists carried out 27 chickens, giving them a chance at a life that had been denied from birth.
Contrary to popular belief, chickens are intelligent, social beings who can remember many faces, form friendships, and show deep maternal care. Some hens even seek out affection, resting their heads against their companions.
One of the most persistent myths is that no animals die for eggs. Yet even before slaughter, around 6% of chickens in the industry die from illness, injury, or sheer exhaustion. Male chicks, unable to lay eggs, are often killed on their first day of life—by gassing or being ground up alive or -if the named two methods of killing male chicks are illegal in the country they were born in- chicken farms will ship them to different countries to kill them there.
Chickens could live up to ten years. But in the egg industry, most are killed after just 15 to 18 months, when their bodies are “spent”. Just by the time you’ve finished reading over 115,000 chickens have been slaughtered worldwide!
We are taught to see eggs as innocent, everyday food. But if we truly looked at where they come from, the system might resemble something closer to dystopian science fiction than a sunday breakfast.
Let’s start to de-normalize eggs as something that’s ours to use and work torwards a world where everybody can be free – no matter the body they’re born into.
We won’t stop fighting until every cage is empty!
Animal liberation now and everywhere!”
