No taste for cruelty
May is National Egg Month; so the group Compassion Over Killing decided that it would be a good idea “to put a compassionate spin on this month-long industry-declared holiday.” So it is conducting a ”Crack the Cruelty” campaign to urge people to choose egg-free foods.
Even people who understand why vegetarians would avoid meat because it involves killing animals often wonder why vegans also avoid eggs and dairy, which don’t require killing the animals.
The sad truth is that the “factory farm” style production of any animal product involves an almost incomprehensible level of cruelty to the animals while they are alive. And then their lives end in the slaughterhouse anyway.
More than 95 percent of the eggs sold in the United States are laid by hens crowded into battery cages so small that they cannot even stretch their wings. According to Compassion Over Killing’s report on ”Animal Suffering in the Egg Industry” these cages give each hen an average of 59 square inches of living space — an area little larger than half a sheet of typing paper. I could go on, but there are many Web sites that tell the story better than I can.
For example United Poultry Concerns has a wealth of information on Battery Hens. Its page on the “Life of one Battery Hen” begins with a touching poem that I will use as an ending:
“Sound of a Battery Hen”
You can tell me: if you come by the
North door, I am in the twelfth cage
On the left-hand side of the third row
From the floor; and in that cage
I am usually the middle one of eight or six or three.
But even without directions, you’d
Discover me. We have the same pale
Comb, clipped yellow beak and white or auburn
Feathers, but as the door opens and you
Hear above the electric fan a kind of
One-word wail, I am the one
Who sounds loudest in my head.
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