As of January 1, 2015, newly built egg factory farms in Alberta will be prohibited from housing hens in battery cages – tiny cages that prevent crowded chickens from so much as stretching a wing for virtually their entire lives.
The chair of the Egg Farmers of Alberta concedes that battery cages “don’t allow the hens to express all of their natural behaviour.”
In late 2013, Mercy For Animals Canada exposed unconscionable abuse of hens at an egg factory farm in Alberta, including:
• Thousands of hens crammed into wire battery cages, each hen with less space than a single sheet of notebook paper to live her entire miserable life
• Workers smashing the heads of chicks and then throwing them still alive and conscious into garbage bags to slowly suffocate
• Chickens trapped in cage wire, mangled by factory machinery, and left to suffer from open wounds and torn beaks without proper veterinary care
• Dead hens left in cages with live hens still laying eggs for human consumption
Although larger cages improve hens’ welfare, the only sure way to eliminate suffering from our diets is to drop eggs in favour of healthy and humane alternatives. Get free tips and recipes at ChooseVeg.ca.