Target: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack
Goal: Ban the practice of keeping hens in cages too small to spread their wings or engage in natural behaviors.
Billions of eggs are eaten every year in the United States alone, with most laying hens confined to small, wire-framed battery cages. On average, each laying hen is given only 67 square inches of cage space; less space than a single sheet of letter-sized paper to live her entire life. Unable to spread their wings, caged laying hens are the most intensively confined animals in the entire agricultural business. They suffer from the lack of many natural behaviors such as nesting, perching, and dustbathing, all acts important for the animals’ welfare.
As one scientist, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Konrad Lorenz said, “The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals, it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries, again and again, to crawl beneath her fellow cage mates to search there in vain for cover.”
These animals suffer from brittle bones and bone fractures, as well as foot problems and feather loss due to restrictive environments and wire floors. Hens in battery cages also have been found to have high rates of a condition that causes liver rupture and death, due mainly to stress and lack of exercise.
While moving to cage-free hens does not equate to cruelty-free, cage-free hens are able to walk, spread their wings, and lay their eggs in nests, vital and natural behavior. While they are still killed young and male chickens are killed at birth, enforcing cage-free farms will drastically improve the lives and welfare of laying hens.
Sign below and demand that hens are given this very basic right to comfort and health.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
As states continue to outlaw the use of battery cages for egg-laying hens, it is important that the US takes a federal stance against the horrific conditions caused by the practice. Most hens in America are given less than 67 square inches of cage space in which to live their entire lives, unable to even spread their wings. These animals are unable to engage in natural practices like nesting, perching, or dustbathing; they also suffer from brittle bones, fractures, foot problems, and feather loss from the tight spaces and wire floors that they are forced to walk on.
It is time to move to cage-free eggs on a federal level. While this does not equate to cruelty-free as there are several other practices that harm hens, it will improve the lives and welfare of the animals by leaps and bounds.
Please, save the millions of chickens suffering in battery cages.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo By: Compassion Over Killing
Please stop this horrible practice. It is backward. They don’t need to suffer like this.
These are sentient creatures…they deserve to live as they were meant to live, not by man’s barbaric, savage rules!!! Buy your eggs from farmers!
This is government sanctioned animal torture and cruelty and must stop! Your citizens care about living beings and treating hens as if they were intangible objects is unconscionable!
This is cruelty beyond measure why are they putting these poor creatures in such tiny packed little cages I would just love to throw those human beings naked in those cages and leave them there just like that for as long as they did those sales. In the Bible in Leviticus God tells you the foods that you can eat and not eat of course they don’t care because this is about money but Sal’s do not have sweat glands so they were put on this planet by God to eat all the garbage all the crap and when you eat sals or pigs guess what all that crap goes inside you God says eat this stuff and you will die… Usually not living a full life
I am so sick of factory farming and I’m doing everything within my power to fight against it and to punish those that implement it!
No wonder they’re called “battery” cages…as in “assault and BATTERY.” Sickening humans, making a hell out of this planet and all life on it!
I can’t believe people are allowed to treat living creatures like this. I use to live on a route that took chickens somewhere. I’d see them on the backs of transport trucks almost every day. I’d see them piled on top of each other not being able to move. They’d be shivering in the rain and snow. They aren’t even afforded the luxury of a tarp. You could see the wounds and their excrement trickling down from one cage onto another. It truly was horrifying. I always wanted to get out of my car and set them free somehow. I never knew where they were going. I couldn’t decide what was the worse fate going to be slaughtered inhumanly or taking to live out torturous years piled in cages to produce eggs. I gave up eating chicken completely after that. I rarely bought eggs but if I did it was from local farmers.