Myth #52: “But eating eggs doesn’t harm anybody.”
I actually used to believe this myth as well, so I pass no judgment on those of you who still believe it. Unfortunately, this sentiment is based in a series of flagrant lies and insidious deceptions propagated by the egg industry …
Please consider the following facts:
*I’ve helped raise chickens for a number of years myself, so I know firsthand how intelligent and caring and sympathetic they are. Each one of them has a distinct personality, each one of them is definitely aware of its own existence, and each & every one of them definitely wants to continue living … Indeed, researchers have consistently supported my own findings; noting that mother hens display obvious signs of affection & empathy for their chicks, finding that chickens are able to remember and recognize over 100 different individual members of their flock, and even documenting that chickens have shown the ability to recognize and differentiate between individual humans as well … Like other birds and mammals, chickens experience REM sleep (directly associated with dreaming), exhibit very sophisticated social behaviors, and share complex communications with one another … Chickens are able to comprehend that an object (like an egg or a chick) still exists even when it is taken away and hidden from them (By comparison, human toddlers are unable to comprehend this concept).
*The vast majority of laying hens (even those on “free range” farms) are constantly weary, emotionally abused, and physiologically exploited. Over 90% of laying hens in the United States live the entirety of their lives in ridiculously tiny cages & over one third of all hens have at least one broken leg they arrive for slaughter. They are all also enslaved in a cycle of forced reproduction whereby they are manipulated to produce up to ten times the eggs that they normally would if left alone to procreate naturally (laying roughly an egg a day for 10 months straight, instead of 3 seasonal layings of only 10-12 eggs each).
*After 18 months to 2 years of hard labor (literally), all laying hens (even “organic” & “cruelty free” & “backyard” layers) stop producing enough eggs to be profitable, and are therefore slaughtered – most often by being strung up by their feet and having their throats slashed while still conscious. In larger factories (where the vast majority of chickens are slaughtered), the machine doing the slashing regularly misses, whereupon the unlucky hens are then boiled alive in a scalding tank.
*For the vast majority of baby chicks that are born in the egg industry, the cruelty is even worse, with female chicks having the tips of their beaks burned off before being fattened up and sent to the egg-production cages as soon as possible — to live out their short lives in despicably squalid & impossibly cramped conditions. Male chicks, useless to the egg farmer, experience their own special nightmare — being either gassed to death, suffocated in garbage bags, or ground up alive (by vile machines called macerators) within hours after birth (200 million of them a year in the U.S. alone).
*Even the most “humanely” treated “free range” hens are raised in disgusting, overcrowded hen houses and are cruelly slaughtered in “kill cones” — again, also while still conscious.
In conclusion, no matter what beliefs you hold about the relative intelligence level of chickens, there is no excuse for treating any sentient being the way chickens are treated… none whatsoever! Indeed, the year is now 2015, and it is high-time for us to stop treating chickens cruelly — which means it is high-time for us to stop supporting the industry that still does so.
Current status of this Myth: Crushed
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE
“It doesn’t take special insight or expertise to see that a hen confined in a tiny cage or living in an overcrowded coop is suffering, and it doesn’t take a large measure of intelligence to imagine what her feelings must be when her eggs are taken from her or when she is immobilized upside down before having her throat slit. As humans, we arrogantly believe that we are capable of knowing just about anything that we want to know—except, ironically, what it feels like to be one of our own victims. We are told we are being “over emotional” if we care about a chicken or grieve over a chicken’s plight. However, it is not our “emotion” that is under attack here, but rather the very qualities that make us human — namely, our ability to have sympathy, our ability to show compassion, and our ability to feel indignity on behalf of fellow sentient being who is in pain and calling for help.” ~ inspired by Karen Davis
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