Treatment of Laying Hens

Faye Chiu

Pecking Order

Battery cages. Beak trimming. Forced molting. Life is no bath in the dust for the egg-laying hen in America.

Karla, a little white hen with a bouncy red comb, scrambles across the yard to catch up with her caretaker. Karen Davis, Ph.D., president of Machipongo, VA-based United Poultry Concerns (UPC), took in the hapless chicken a year ago and added her to the flock of 40 other rescued chickens and one rooster who have found a permanent home at UPC’s accredited sanctuary.

In the spring of 2000, Karla was abandoned and featherless, her poor condition a telltale sign that she had been used in intensive egg production. “She probably was overlooked on a loading dock when her group was shipped to slaughter,” says Davis. Unclaimed, the lucky leghorn found poultry paradise with UPC—a nonprofit group dedicated to the respectful treatment of all domestic fowl.

Every year, 95 percent of the more than 260 million laying hens in this country lead lives of constant stress in windowless buildings that typically house up to 140,000 birds. Groups of six to nine hens are confined within wire-mesh battery cages stacked in tiers, with each bird relegated to only 48 to 54 square inches of space—about half the size of the page you are reading. In such intensive confinement, laying hens cannot even stretch their wings, let alone perform other natural behaviors. A typical facility is artificially lit for 14 or even 16 hours a day to simulate the seasons of maximum day length—thereby stimulating maximum egg production throughout the entire year. Pushed to the limits to produce eggs and deprived of any exercise, laying hens gradually suffer calcium depletion and develop osteoporosis, which leaves their weakened bones prone to fracture.

“In the hour and a half before laying an egg, the [battery] hen gets extremely frustrated,” states poultry expert Ian J.H. Duncan, Ph.D., professor of applied ethology and chair in animal welfare at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. “Normally she would find a secluded place to build a nest, but she can’t do that. She will walk back and forth in a stereotyped way, but of course, there’s not much room to do that, either. The hen becomes very aggressive and pecks at her cagemates. This happens to millions of birds daily.”

Another type of excessive pecking, an abnormal behavior called cannibalism, “often results in severe injury or death,” according to Joy Mench, Ph.D., professor of animal science and director of the Center for Animal Welfare at University of California at Davis. Because of this stress-related phenomenon, farmed chickens undergo the process of “beak trimming” when they are one to two weeks old, a process in which one-third of the upper beak and a corresponding bit of the lower is removed by a precision trimmer or a hot blade trimmer. (In the egg industry, newborn male chicks are considered by-products and are culled.)

“Hot-blade beak trimming is associated with long-term pain when birds are beak trimmed at certain ages because the nerve endings grow back in a bundle,” says Mench. “Yet in order to operate in egg production without losing birds, some form of beak trimming is needed.” Contrary to what many believe, this includes not only battery cage operations, but free-range farming systems as well. In fact, Mench notes, this displaced foraging behavior is even more of a problem among uncaged chickens. As she explains, “Cannibalism is an issue with any group of 60 or more birds. But a commercial operation can’t be viable with fewer than that.” Both Mench and Duncan confirm that the solution to cannibalistic behavior will likely be selective breeding for birds with less tendency to display the trait.

After a year of producing eggs, 60 percent of hens in the United States endure the process of forced molting—a starvation practice in which food is withheld for four to 21 days—in order to shock the birds’ systems into an additional cycle of egg laying. Chickens, like many animals, naturally molt periodically. “Molting is good,” Mench says. “Taking away food is not. Chickens are animals who eat every day and do not react well to a complete absence of food.” Surviving birds suffer weakened immune systems, which results in greater susceptibility to Salmonella enteritidis, a pathogenic bacteria that can be transmitted to the eggs we eat.

After two years, a chicken’s productivity falls off, and she is labeled a “spent hen.” “When spent hens are sent to slaughter,” states Duncan, “there is no incentive to handle them carefully because they are not worth very much—practically nothing—and a huge amount of damage is done to hens while removing them from the cages.” Many processing plants currently refuse to slaughter spent hens, which forces egg producers to pay to have the birds hauled away and killed. Twenty to 30 percent, Mench states, are disposed of directly on farms, which is “difficult to do humanely.”

On the federal level, the Humane Slaughter Act only covers “livestock,” the definition of which does not include poultry, and on the state level, the majority of anticruelty statutes exempt “customary farming practices” from prosecution. Despite these sobering realities, there are some hopeful signs that the welfare of laying hens in America may improve in the future.

Coop d’etat 2000

In late August 2000, McDonald’s Corporation responded to steady pressure from animal protection groups by announcing that its U.S. egg suppliers would be required to adopt guidelines to improve conditions for laying hens. “Before McDonald’s decision, I would have said that the United States was years and years behind Europe in terms of farm animal welfare, with no real sign of improvement,” says Duncan. “The industry was so clearly governed by the almighty dollar. Suddenly, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic.”

McDonald’s guidelines mandate 72 square inches, or 50 percent more space for each caged hen; ban forced molting; and require a gradual phaseout of beak trimming. Lisa Weisberg, senior vice president of ASPCA Government Affairs and Public Policy, emphasizes that for these new guidelines to be effective, “ongoing, unannounced oversight is crucial.” The true impact of McDonald’s landmark decision, however, is its ripple effect on other major U.S. food retailers. This past June, Burger King Corporation also adopted guidelines and audits for the “humane handling of food animals,” including the requirement that “birds be able to stand fully upright” in an alotted cage space of 75 square inches. And Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation, is now considering the adoption of more humane standards for its suppliers.

“They have to ‘keep up’ at this point,” explains Steve Gross, Ph.D., of the Illinois Humane Political Action Committee (PAC), which is attempting to introduce a bill banning forced molting into the state legislature for the second year in a row. Similar efforts to introduce legislative bans in California and Washington State last year were blocked by the states’ agriculture committees. Ironically, although activist efforts to ban forced molting increase public awareness of cruel industry practices, experts worry about the ramifications should such mandates be instituted. “What happens if we ban forced molting?” asks Mench. “Instead of taking hens through a molt, we’ll double or triple the numbers of hens brought into the system.” Duncan points out that forced molting is not practiced in Canada, and after a year, a new set of birds replaces the spent hens. While Gross acknowledges the dilemma, he sees the passage of a forced molting ban as “the proverbial foot in the door.”

Egg producers could alleviate the ordeal of forced molting without an all-out ban, according to Duncan. “It would be ideal to simply reduce the amount of light per day. Combining short days with deprivation of food for just a couple of days—not 21—would be almost as effective as the present method.” With ongoing pressure from animal advocates and growing public awareness of the controversial issue, United Egg Producers, the U.S. egg industry’s primary trade association, is now funding research into humane alternatives of induced molting.

States Weisberg, “Legislation to ban forced molting would send a clear message to industry that American consumers oppose the inhumane treatment of farm animals and that [industry] must change its rearing practices.”

Consumers are becoming more familiar with farm animal welfare issues, and not just through legislative campaigns. Filtered through popular culture, adults, teenagers and young children alike are receiving humane messages from such works as last year’s feature-length animated film, Chicken Run, and the more recent PBS documentary, Natural History of the Chicken. Although it is the ASPCA’s position that diet is a matter of individual choice, there’s no doubt that the most direct way to decrease the suffering of laying hens is to reduce egg consumption.

Farm Fresh?

For those who seek more humanely produced eggs, wading through product labels is tricky. “Because of depression in the industry as a whole, there are operations that are much more focused on marketing than on production and quality that are now trying to get into specialty eggs,” states Rod Wubbena, general manager of family-owned and operated Phil’s Fresh Eggs in Forreston, IL. Wubbena—son of the product’s namesake—is a second-generation farmer whose operation has raised cage-free hens since its inception in 1959. Focusing on quality and superior taste, Phil’s Fresh Eggs manufactures its own feed and has developed a “happy hour” system in which hens spend time each day in scratch alleys where they can access dust, wood shavings and calcium. “This is a way of life,” Wubbena says. “It isn’t the most financially productive investment out there. Our cost per bird housed is $20 to $26. The cost for a battery cage operation is $5 to $9 a bird.”

Phil’s Fresh Eggs is certified by the American Humane Association (AHA)’s “Free Farmed” label. “This label validates what we’ve been doing all along,” says Wubbena, whose product is available at major Midwest food retailers. Although all of Phil’s Fresh Eggs’ laying hens are “free farmed,” there is currently no requirement that participants in AHA’s certification must meet these standards across their entire production base—which some consider a serious drawback to the free-farmed labeling initiative.

Many experts feel that consumers, if they are willing to pay more for eggs, can “buy” better treatment of laying hens. Humane groups such as United Poultry Concerns, however, simply promote veganism. “Do everything you can to lessen the cruelty for animals still being farmed, but in the meantime, get the cruelty out of your own systems,” says UPC’s Davis. With her plumage now fully regrown, it seems likely that Karla would agree.

©2001
ASPCA Animal Watch - Fall 2001

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