Written by PETA
Update: Great news! The monks at Mepkin Abbey now have a thriving mushroom business. After PETA's protests, boycotts, and complaints to government agencies, the monks re-examined their egg farm and discovered that they can get all their needs met without harming animals.
The following was originally posted on December 20, 2007:
We've just heard the news that the monks at Mepkin Abbey have decided to phase out their egg-production business over the next year and a half following pressure from PETA, including protests of the monastery that are going on today. According to the Associated Press, Mepkin's Father Stan Gumula said late last night that the focus on the monks' practices as a result of PETA's investigation has been too much of a distraction, and that they will be looking for a new industry to help meet their expenses.
PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich points out that South Carolina had the 6th highest peanut production among U.S. states last year (quite how he knows such things, I have no idea), and recommends that the monks go into the booming business of peanut butter packaging, where they can pack the peanuts as tight as they like without any fear of our getting on their case about it. In fact, we might be their first customers. My own vote is more traditional—there's nothing quite like a good Trappist Ale.
Whatever they end up deciding, this is nothing short of a Christmas miracle for the chickens who have suffered for so long at Mepkin Abbey, and we commend the monks for their compassionate decision.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It never hurts to brush up on answers to questions about animal issues—even seasoned protesters can get a stumper from passersby now and then. See if you know the answers to the following five questions that often pop up in discussions about animal rights:
What's wrong with eggs and dairy products from "free-range" animals? There are no standards for what "free-range" means, so animals on such farms may still spend most of their time in filthy, crowded sheds. Cruel practices such as searing off hens' beaks with a hot blade and relegating male calves to veal crates occur, and when the animals stop producing enough eggs or milk, they are sent to the same slaughterhouses as factory-farmed animals.
If we don't test on animals, what other methods are available? Computer simulations, cell cultures, human cadavers, and clinical trials are just some of the many options researchers can use instead of animal testing to obtain more accurate and cost-effective results.
davedehtre|cc by 2.0
What's wrong with wearing wool? In Australia—where most of the world's merino wool comes from—sheep have been bred to have excessively wrinkled skin in order to produce more wool. The wrinkles collect moisture, which attracts flies, so many farmers resort to "mulesing," a gruesome and cruel procedure in which huge chunks of skin and flesh are cut from lambs' backsides in a crude attempt to prevent flystrike.
Should we put endangered animals in zoos? Endangered animals bred in zoos are rarely released into the wild. Instead, they will spend their lives "warehoused" in cramped enclosures that cannot come close to replicating their natural habitats. As a result, many develop stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking from side to side, and self-mutilation. The only humane and effective way to combat extinction is to protect animals' habitats.
What's wrong with using a choke or prong collar on my dog? As their names imply, choke and prong collars inflict discomfort and pain, and they can severely injure dogs' necks and throats. Far safer and more humane options are no-pull harnesses and halters like the Easy Walk, Halti, or even a standard figure-H harness. For cruelty-free dog-training tips, check out celebrity dog trainer Tamar Geller's video series for PETA.
Have another animal rights question that you've always wondered about? Visit PETA's Frequently Asked Questions page.
McDonald's has kicked its PR machine into high gear after a terrific undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals at Sparboe Farms, one of McDonald's primary egg suppliers, revealed that workers grabbed hens by the throat and slammed them into cages, that an employee swung a hen by her feet, that male chicks were tossed into plastic bags to suffocate, that rotting corpses of hens were left in cages with live birds, and other horrendous abuses.
In response, McDonald's announced that it will stop buying eggs from Sparboe Farms. Hang on, though—don't let McDonald's PR move lead you to believe that this will make a real difference for animals. We've seen it before. What Mercy for Animals uncovered is business as usual for factory farms, as countless PETA investigations, even of other McDonald's suppliers, have shown.
One example: A 2007 PETA investigation of a Union City, Tennessee, slaughterhouse that supplies McDonald's with much of its chicken flesh revealed that employees yanked birds out of shackles so aggressively that they broke the birds' legs, amused themselves by forcing as many as six chickens into a shackle that was designed for one bird, and forcefully slammed chickens against shackles. The electrified water bath that is supposed to stun chickens before their throats are cut was not working for two days, and slaughterhouse operators knowingly allowed tens of thousands of chickens to have their throats slit while the birds were still conscious.
It isn't good enough for McDonald's to simply switch to buying eggs from another lousy supplier with no stricter standards of "care" than the previous cruel supplier. On filthy, intensive-confinement farms—which describes every one of McDonald's and KFC's suppliers—hens are crammed into feces-filled wire cages with less space than a sheet of paper for each bird, and chicks' beaks are burned off without painkillers.
What consumers must demand are meaningful reforms and an end to the worst abuses suffered by the chickens killed for McDonald's and KFC. Here's one way to help chickens: Encourage the chains to switch to a less-cruel slaughter method called "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK). All the abuses that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses would be eliminated if McDonald's required its suppliers to switch to CAK, because with CAK, the birds are dead before they are shackled, bled, and scalded in defeathering tanks. Yet McDonald's and KFC have dragged their feet for years instead of switching methods, even though CAK is approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and even though McDonald's European suppliers adopted this method years ago.
Buyer beware: If you eat at McDonald's or KFC, you're eating food created via extreme cruelty to animals. Please boycott these companies and click here to tell them that you're not lovin' their chicken abuse.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Do you know one of those people who says, "I'm a vegetarian, but I still eat chicken"? Considering that chickens are arguably the most abused animals on the planet, they should be one of the first animals we remove from our plates—and there's no better time to do that than World Week for Abolition of Meat.
Chickens' cognitive skills rival those of cats, dogs, and, in some cases, primates. They are adept communicators who develop complex social structures. Chickens show deep love for their family members and care for others in their group. A mother chicken starts teaching her chicks to "talk" before they have even hatched, clucking softly to them, and they cluck back to her and each other from inside their shells. Human babies cannot replicate their mothers' sounds until they are several months old.
But the billions of chickens who are slaughtered for food or crammed into cages and used for eggs suffer horribly throughout their short lives.
If you know someone who still eats chickens, please share this information with them and ask them to become a champion for chickens.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
One surprising item in the news today (h/t Treehugger) is a story about activists with the Israeli group Anonymous for Animal Rights.
For the last few years, Anonymous has been campaigning against the use of cruel battery cages on egg factory farms. Now, the group has put a hidden webcam inside a battery cage on an egg factory farm in Israel, streaming live video showing exactly what life is like for hens who are forced to live in these cramped wire-mesh cages. So far, the owners of the farm haven't been able to locate the camera—but, as you might imagine, they're apparently trying to find it.
As Treehugger put it (an understatement, to say the least), "It does not make for pleasant viewing." In the short time that I watched, I saw the caged birds pecking at each other in obvious frustration, and, as is apparent from the abuse, neglect, filth, and cruelty exposed by PETA's many undercover investigations, the situation is often even uglier for animals on factory farms.
Written by Jeff Mackey
If you had the same reaction that I did (i.e., violent retching) when you heard about KFC's hideously unhealthy Double Down (you know, the sandwich that replaced bread with fried chicken and forced you to think about all those globules of deadly gunk gumming up people's blood vessels), get this: A single egg yolk contains vastly more cholesterol than an entire Double Down. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.
With heart disease being the number one killer of Americans, the cholesterol-bomb egg industry has resorted to ever-more-desperate "move along, nothing to see here" tactics to try to pass the blame, but a new report in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology calls them out on their bull … uh, chicken poop. The take-away? Eating just one whole egg per day can double your risk of coronary disease.
Looking to break the egg habit? It's as easy as (eggless custard) pie—check out these tips and recipes!
If anyone still believes that "organic" eggs are a humane choice, please look at these gut-wrenching photos from the Organic Valley farm in Wisconsin: They show birds in stinking, stifling, windowless warehouses, crammed so tightly together that they're barely able to move—much less spread their wings, scratch in the dirt, or interact normally in any way.
The heartbreaking photos were released by a farm-policy research group called The Cornucopia Institute in a report called "Scrambled Eggs," which details the entrenched abuse in industrial-scale egg factories.
As the pictures attest, "organic" doesn't mean that birds are allowed to be free. Cage-free does not mean free range, of course, and so the chickens can still be crammed into sheds and forced to suffer through having a part of their beak cut off, just like birds on factory farms. But "organic" does mean that the chickens aren't fed antibiotics—leaving them all the more susceptible to illness in the filthy, poorly ventilated, crowded conditions.
Break the cycle of cruelty in your own life by choosing vegan alternatives to eggs, meat, and dairy products. Call 1-888-VEG-FOOD or order a free copy of our vegetarian/vegan starter kit today.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
Ever since half a billion eggs were recalled because of a salmonella outbreak, people have been talking about food safety regulations. Animal welfare issues have been mentioned, but they need to be considered more seriously. The following are some facts to help you tell the hens' side of the story:
There's cruelty in every carton of eggs:Ninety-nine percent of hens used by the egg industry are confined to filthy, crowded battery cages. In June, the owner of one of the egg farms involved in the recall—and of the company that supplies chickens and chicken feed to both farms implicated in the outbreak—pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals and paid more than $130,000 in fines and restitution following an undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals.
Salmonella spreads like wildfire on factory farms:Under squalid factory farm conditions, it's easy for salmonella bacteria—which live in the intestines and feces of animals—to spread from bird to bird and from birds to people. Vegan foods don't naturally harbor salmonella bacteria.
Avoiding eggs is the best way to prevent salmonella poisoning and reduce animal suffering:A salmonella vaccine that has been used successfully in Britain is available, but American regulators don't believe there's enough evidence to show that vaccinating hens will prevent people from getting sick. It's obvious that our food safety regulations are not all they're cracked up to be and that the safest and kindest way to prevent salmonella poisoning is to stop eating eggs altogether. PETA is urging Iowa schools to stop serving eggs to children in order to help protect them from food poisoning. You can opt for egg replacer, scrambled tofu, and other tasty vegan foods.
Written by Heather Moore
More than a quarter of a billion eggs—a quarter of a billion!—have reportedly been recalled because of an outbreak of salmonella that has sickened hundreds of people in at least three states. A nationwide recall of 13 brands sold by an Iowa egg factory farm has launched a multi-agency investigation that is only expected to grow in scope and scale.It's heartbreaking to imagine how many hens lived and died in misery to lay and lose their now rejected eggs, when you consider that a hen has to endure 22 hours of confinement in a crowded battery cage to produce just one egg. Our friends at Mercy for Animals recently released undercover video footage from a California egg factory farm exposing row after multi-stacked row of chickens who live in filthy cages in which they can barely move, injured and sick birds who never see a veterinarian, and birds who are violently grabbed and thrown by their wings, necks, and legs:
The easiest way to steer clear of diarrhea, cramps, and a possible trip to the emergency room is to avoid eggs altogether. There are loads of ways to avoid eating chicken embryos—check out all these alternatives.
Here's a toxic tidbit from the "Gross Meat Facts" files: Chickens who are raised for their flesh are routinely given feed laced with Roxarsone, an additive that contains—are you ready for this—arsenic. May we suggest a new slogan for the nugget bucket? "Potent poison in every piece!"
The fact is, roughly 70 percent of the chickens who are raised for their flesh in the U.S. are fed arsenic-laced feed. (Like antibiotics, arsenic is believed to speed growth and produce more meat to sell, quicker.) The chicken industry insists that most of the arsenic is eliminated in the chickens' waste (tough luck for fish in nearby waterways), but a recent study conducted by the Utah Department of Health revealed that it is also excreted in chickens' eggs. This was discovered after two children who ate eggs daily from the family's hens (who had been given feed containing Roxarsone) were found to have arsenic levels in their bloodstream that were at least twice the level deemed toxic.
It's also in chickens' flesh, according to a study conducted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), an organization that is petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban arsenic feed additives. The IATP found that all the fast-food chicken and more than half of the store-bought chicken tested contained elevated levels of arsenic. High arsenic levels have been linked to certain cancers as well as immune system, endocrine, and neurological problems.
I guess now we know why the Colonel is so anxious to keep his recipe a secret.
Written by Alisa Mullins
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