Video: Emma’s Story—a Revealing Look Inside a ‘Humane’ Egg Shed

When California’s Proposition 2—which requires that egg-laying hens have enough space to stand up and stretch their limbs—passed in 2008, many people were happy that these horrendously abused animals might at last have some modicum of relief. But as a recent investigation by animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere shows, even hens at so-called “humane” farms continue to be confined to tiny, filth-encrusted cages that are jammed so full of birds that they can barely move:

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));

After all this misery, there is the frightening transport to the slaughterhouse and then slaughter itself. Like “humane meat,” “humane eggs” simply don’t exist. The only way to ensure that hens escape the hell of constant confinement is to refuse to buy any eggs at all.