Photo by Unparalleled Suffering wPhotography, Aug. 24, 2022

‘Cage-free’ eggs are not humane for hens, Portland (Maine) Press Herald, March 3, 2023

Letter to the editor:
One of your readers asked me to write a letter explaining how cage-free eggs differ from free-range eggs, in response to a Feb. 18 letter,“Mainers should take action on cage-free eggs.”

Cage-free hens are more humanely treated than battery-caged hens, who are not treated humanely at all. However, cage-free hens do not go outdoors; they do not range in the open air. Cage-free hens are typically confined in crowded windowless buildings. They are almost always debeaked (“beak-trimmed”) at the hatchery before being moved elsewhere. Though chickens are designed by nature to scratch in the ground for food with their beaks and claws, they do not get to do this in a cage-free facility housing 25,000 or more hens.

Chickens love sunlight – they sunbathe daily outdoors. Cage-free hens are denied this simple pleasure. And while cage-free hens would normally live five or more years, they are usually slaughtered after a year of laying eggs.

For these reasons, and because avian influenza and salmonella have become intrinsic to all sectors of the egg industry, consumers would do well to consider egg-free cooking and baking. As many of us have learned, eggs are not necessary.

Karen Davis
president, United Poultry Concerns
Machipongo, Va.

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UPC Chides Egg Shortage Complaints, LA Times, January 11, 2023

To the editor: It is heartening that many states are passing legislation to provide at least a modicum of “welfare” laws on behalf of farmed animals.

As for egg shortages, please. Birds and pigs since a year ago or more have been tortured to death slowly in the procedure of mass extermination known as “ventilation shutdown-plus.”

In this process, they are deprived of air to breathe and subjected to extreme heat designed to induce heatstroke. Anyone with a conscience who has watched chickens and pigs dying under this merciless procedure can only be sickened by the bottomless cruelty of agribusiness and the helpless agony of our innocent victims.

As long as chickens are forced to live in squalor, avian influenza will recycle. This is “egg-xactly” a fact.

Karen Davis, Machipongo, Va.
The writer is president of the group United Poultry Concerns.