The Egg Bill: the Kindness of Humanity

Here's some FYI occurring in America.

"The Rotten Egg Bill aka “The Screaming Hen Bill”
Needs Our Help To Be Defeated!

“This legislation puts cages in place, puts them in law. That’s a huge cave-in . . .” – Joe Miller, attorney for Rose Acre Farms Battery Cage Hen Operation, 2nd largest egg producer in the U.S., 2013.
United Poultry Concerns opposes the EGG PRODUCTS INSPECTION ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2013. We oppose legislation that benefits egg producers and legally condemns hens to living in cages.
Before you read further, please watch “Normal and Natural,” a short video by Edgar’s Mission in Australia
Facts:
The Egg Bill would legalize and legitimize cages for hens
What is an enriched cage?
Helping Hens or Benefiting Their Abusers?
What Should I Do?

In “Agreement Raises Flags for Egg-Laying Hens” published in 2012, United Poultry Concerns reviewed the effort by animal advocates to ban cages for egg-laying hens in Europe and the United States. In 2011, a pact between The Humane Society of the United States and United Egg Producers frustrated this effort, which also failed in the European Union when a law went into effect January 1, 2012 banning conventional barren battery cages while legalizing “enriched” or “furnished” battery cage systems for hens in the EU.

Following suit, the alliance between HSUS and UEP led to legislation before Congress in 2012. The Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012 (The “Egg Bill”) sought to legalize cages for egg-laying hens, prevent voters from initiating ballots to ban cages in their own state, and prohibit states from passing stronger welfare laws than those set in the Egg Bill.

Last year’s bills failed but are once again before Congress. Under the terms of the 2013 Egg Bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Rep. Curt Schrader of Oregon, barren battery cages would be phased out over a 20-year period and replaced by “enriched” cages as the dominant housing system for hens in the United States.

The Egg Bill would legalize and legitimize cages for hens

Since cages are the cheapest way to mass-produce billions of eggs for consumers, the majority of the 280 million hens in U.S. facilities will continue to be caged in long windowless buildings just as they are now, under the proposed law.

This year’s Egg Bill is even worse than last year’s: one of the worst exemptions allows the toxic excretory ammonia levels of 25 parts per million in confined-hen buildings to reach even higher levels of toxicity to accommodate egg industry “emergencies” of unspecified duration. The toxic ammonia the Egg Bill permits constitutes animal cruelty even without cages.

What is an enriched cage?

In her forthcoming book Chickens’ Lib: The Story of a Campaign, Clare Druce, founder of Chickens’ Lib in England in the 1970s, summarizes in "Enriched" Cages – A Gaping Loophole in the "Welfare" Law for Egg-Laying Hens in the European Union:

Basically it’s still a battery cage, the birds living behind bars on metal grid flooring, the cages stacked up in tiers, many thousands of hens to a building. Compared to the old-style cage, there’s mandatory additional floor space per hen measuring roughly the size of a postcard, bringing the entire minimum space per hen to 750 square centimeters (116 square inches), little more than a sheet of paper.

The cages must include a perch, a “nest” box and a scratch pad. The term “nest box” sounds comforting, Clare says. “But in the enriched cage context it is simply a curtained area, behind which the hen finds the same sloping cage floor, the metal grid now covered in matting of some kind. Not a wisp of straw, no soft material with which to arrange her nest. Some of the enriched colony cages I saw held up to 60 hens. Gleaming metal cages stretched away into the distance, and there was that familiar unending clamor of frustrated hens’ voices.”

Helping Hens or Benefiting Their Abusers?
Under the terms of the Egg Bill, the majority of hens will remain in cages. They will be locked into a federal law administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture which doesn’t even enforce the 55-year-old “Humane Slaughter Act,” from which birds are excluded.

At most, brown hens, being slightly larger than the white hens who represent the majority of egg-laying hens in the United States, may within 20 years get a maximum of 144 square inches apiece, or one square foot of living space per hen. The white hens will max out at 124 square inches per hen, well below a square foot, even though a hen needs a minimum 1.5 square foot, or 216 square inches, merely to engage in minimal “normal behavior.”

Whether the Egg Bill would ban starvation molting of hens is a question. The ammonia cave-in and the cage cave-in show how capitulation to egg industry economics and “emergencies” will likely influence the bill as it moves through the legislative process to its final, eviscerated form.

The claim that the proposed legislation would ban inhumane methods of “euthanasia” is totally false. Spent hens are just piles of garbage – a costly nuisance – to egg producers, to be gotten rid of any old way. Like the male chicks of the egg industry who are trashed as soon as they are born, their sisters are a waste product to this industry as soon as they lay fewer eggs. Gassing hens to death with CO2 in metal boxes is NOT EUTHANASIA!

What Should I Do?

United Poultry Concerns opposes the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments. We oppose legislation that benefits egg producers and legally condemns hens to living in cages. With Congress set to consider the Farm Bill shortly, please notify your U.S. Senators and Representatives that you oppose the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments. Call them at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to oppose this legislation and briefly and clearly explain your reason.

Thank you for taking action.

To view Humane Farming Association's animated video A Cage Is A Cage and learn more, please visit: StopTheRottenEggBill.org.

To learn more about enriched cages and why sanctuaries oppose them, see “Enriched” Cages for Egg-Laying Hens in the US and EU by United Poultry Concerns."

Fowl Crying Foul

One thing I marvel at is how humans are so eagar to disassociate themselves from anything they deem outside themselves.  For instance, if it's not human A's child, then stranger human B can continue kidnapping that child and human A will simply make a phone call.  No kidding.  This really happened.  If it had been human A's child, that person most likely would have risked their own life to stop the stranger in his tracks.  Why couldn't human A have risked their life for someone elese's child?  The answer is because, whether due to an Implant, conditioning, fear, arrogance, or disassociation, humans see themselves as separate and alone.  Divide and conquer may be the true reason for this disassociation.

This year, can't we humans connect with creatures great and small?  Become aware of backyard butchery.  What if that was your child being tortured like that?  Would you allow it?  What about farmers of fowl profiting off the burned carcasses of their stock?  If it was your child's boarding school, would you demand the building be equiped with fire alarms and water sprinklers?  And while we're on the topic of farming.  What if your child were being farmed, would you allow that?  This year, resolve to not treat creatures the way you wouldn't want your child treated.  How about not supporting certain diets.

Let's stand united, sending a clear message that enough is enough and that we have no intention of supporting cruel food any longer.  After all, they are our children.

According to...United Poultry Concerns...

The following is an e-mail from United Poultry Concerns.

"1 January 2013

Pet Chicken Saves Family from Household Fire

Who Will Save Chickens from Fires in Their Houses?

“The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited.” – Dennis Murawska

The story of Cluck Cluck, a hen whose loud cries alerted her grateful family to a fire in their Wisconsin home on December 28, thus enabling them to escape, has resounded around the world. Reporters love this story, and rightly so! But Cluck Cluck’s Heroism with its Happy Ending and shower of praise also echoes the cries of tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on farms throughout the United States whose clamor upon sensing a fire in their houses is totally ignored by their owners, who refuse to install even minimal fire protection equipment, claiming it would cost too much. They prefer to let the birds burn alive and collect the insurance and taxpayer reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Dec. 20, 2012, 25,000 turkeys burned to death on a farm in Virginia. Last May, 500,000 hens burned to death on a farm in Colorado. Last June, 14,000 turkeys burned to death – 7,000 in North Carolina and 7,000 in Minnesota.

When we learned in July 2012 that the National Fire Protection Association, “the authority on fire, electrical, and building safety,” had proposed an amendment requiring all newly-constructed farmed animal housing facilities to be equipped with sprinklers and smoke control systems, and that the agribusiness lobbies had successfully joined forces to defeat the proposal, we filed our own Appeal and gave testimony at the NFPA’s Meeting on the proposal on August 7 in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Though the agribusiness lobby won the first round, we will continue to fight for a NFPA provision mandating that fire protection equipment be installed in all farmed animal housing facilities. Nothing shows more starkly their total lack of compassion and accountability than the refusal of farmers and farming corporations to install basic fire protection equipment in the buildings they trap their animals in. If the alarm cries of one single hen could be heard two floors from where the Wisconsin family lay sleeping, imagine the sound of many thousands of birds trapped in their cells, and nobody listening as they scream, burn, and suffocate to death together.



United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes

the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.

Don't just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.

www.UPC-online.org

United Poultry Concerns
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405"

Force-Feeding Stopped

CA Foie Gras Ban Takes Effect
By Doris Lin, About.com Guide July 5, 2012
http://animalrights.about.com/b/2012/07/05/ca-foie-gras-ban-takes-effect.htm
The force feeding machine rolls up and down the aisles between rows of caged ducks.
Photo courtesy of Farm Sanctuary

California's foie gras ban that was signed into law in 2004 took effect on July 1, 2012. Foie gras is the fattened liver of a duck or goose, and is considered one of the cruelest factory farming practices. The liver is ten times its normal size as a result of force-feeding the birds through a metal tube shoved into their throats. The law prohibits force-feeding birds for the purpose of enlarging the bird's liver, and prohibits selling the products that result from force-feeding. Because the only way to produce such an unnatural product is through force-feeding, the sale and production of foie gras is effectively banned.
CA is the first state in the U.S. to ban foie gras, but a 2006 ban in Chicago was in effect for two years before it was overturned. Israel, South Africa and several European nations have banned the force-feeding of animals for food production.
Some people have reacted as you might expect - by violating the statute and by filing a lawsuit to try to have the ban overturned.
The animal rights position is that veganism is the solution because any animal use violates that animal's rights. While some farming practices may be more cruel than others, there is no such thing as humane animal agriculture.