Meet Consuela May, a loved and pampered chicken who now lives in Madison, Wisconsin. When her adopted parents found her in a landfill, she was skinny, featherless, and sunburned. Animal compassion usually isn't my #1 issue, but Consuela's story made me simultaneously nauseated and teary-eyed. Read on...
My source for this diary is the article "From eggs to landfills: live chickens at the dump?" by Susan Troller, printed in the Capital Times on Aug 7, 2007
If you've got normal grocery store eggs in your fridge, Consuela's story is their story too. She was an egg-laying hen before she began her miserable existence in the Deer Track Park landfill. When she and her fellow laying hens were born, the male baby chicks born with them were probably ground up while hopefully unconscious but still alive, to serve as feed for minks or other livestock.
Eighteen weeks later, Consuela began laying eggs at her home, Creekwood Farm outside Lake Mills, WI. She had been debeaked so she and her neighbors would be unable to peck one another to death. Most likely, she was considered a "spent hen" (a hen for whom egg production had begun to wane) by the time she was two years old.
Once the birds are "spent," they are euthanized with carbon dioxide and dumped in landfills. For Consuela and a few others, the gassing failed and the birds were delivered to the landfill alive, inside crates filled with spent hen carcasses. Often, the survivors are run over by trucks.
A preferred practice by egg operations involves euthanizing entire buildings of up to 100,000 at once, because then the chicken shed can be thoroughly cleaned before more hens move in.
Consuela lucked out because a couple who was dropping off some trash found her and brought her to a vet. I'll finish up by quoting a few paragraphs from the article I read. If I wasn't already convinced to buy farmers' market eggs (or skip eggs entirely), I am now!
Perry also said that chickens at many egg factory farms are kept in what are known as battery cages, which the Humane Society of the United States calls "one of the worst factory farm abuses."
"These cages are so small that the hens can't stand fully upright or engage in activities like stretching their wings, or preening, or bathing in the dust. They are deprived of any of the normal behaviors that chickens need to do," Perry said.
In Europe, the use of battery cages for hens is being phased out, with a deadline for their complete elimination in 2012.
Another egg farm practice Perry cited as particularly harsh involves withdrawing food from the hens to force a molting period (shedding feathers) for the birds. After molting, there is a surge in egg production.
According to the United Egg Producers, 85 to 90 percent of the egg farms in America now abide by a set of scientifically developed and industry designed standards for animal welfare that discourages food withdrawal as a method to encourage molting. All standards relating to how chickens are housed and handled are at this time entirely voluntary.
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"Basically, if you're a chicken," Nitzel said, "you want to be born in Europe."