Martha Rosenberg: Nice Try, Egg Industry: CA's Prop 2 passes

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by Martha Rosenberg

It is probably not accurate to call an industry that gasses males at birth and females at 18 months "humane" but California's recently passed Proposition 2 will make egg farms in California more humane.

Despite the $9 million agribusiness spent to defeat the initiative -- which bans file cabinet size wire battery cages holding 4-7 hens unable to walk, fully stretch their wings, and perch and veal and gestation crates -- and despite a racist, "egg immigration" scare, more votes were cast for Prop 2 than 11 other propositions and even for Obama.

Seems when Californians looked at undercover videos of prolapsed, cannibalized hens on California farms, they didn't see the "science based" system the egg industry touts. When they viewed bloody, insect covered eggs, they did not see a "wholesome product."

Nor did they believe anti Prop 2 veterinarian Nancy Reimers, who made the talk show circuit on behalf of agribusiness when she said the very fact that hens were producing eggs proved they were healthy because stressed "chickens quit laying eggs."

But even though California rejected anti Prop 2 arguments about loss of jobs, higher egg prices, diseased eggs and sickness, factory farmers are circling the battery cages.

In a post Prop 2 interview on Cattlenetwork.com, Steven L. Kopperud, senior vice president of Policy Direction, Inc. says factory farmers must protect their "valuable, safe, sustainable, effective technologies [is there a joke coming?] that allow us to maintain and enhance animal care, provide consumers a quality product and allow us to make a living for ourselves and our families."

"Aaron," a humane investigator for Mercy For Animals had one such job making a living for himself and his family at the Menifee, CA based Norco Ranch by maintaining the egg conveyor belts in 11 barns, 12 hours a day, six days a week for $8.50 an hour with no overtime.

His non-English speaking coworkers earned even less to remove manure -- toxic with pink fly poison pellets -- and depopulate spent hens in carbon dioxide chambers.

Aaron says 30 barns constitute the Norco Ranch facility with one employee assigned to 180,000 to 330,000 chickens. So much for "animal care."

You can't breathe without a face mask in the mice and maggot infested 100 degree barns or hear without yelling when the birds are being depopulated, says Aaron, who kept a diary while he worked at Norco during August and September.

"This morning I saw that one of the barns was empty of birds and about 10 kill carts and 45 carbon dioxide containers were in the room. One kill cart was about ¾ full of dead hens, who had died inhaling the acidic, pungent CO₂ gas. A worker told me that the birds were killed after about 1 year and 8 months in cages," writes Aaron.

"Another worker told me that he had found a live hen in a cage he was cleaning. I told another worker about this hen and she explained that it was likely that the bird's leg was caught in the cage wire and no one bothered to dislodge her. I asked her what we should do with the bird, and she said to leave her there until she died."

When factory farms such as the famous Chino, CA-based Hallmark Meat Company or Denny's supplier House of Raeford in North Carolina are confronted with video taken by undercover employees, they often accuses the documenters of tolerating or encouraging abuse by not reporting it. (see: Swiftboating.)

But Aaron says he repeatedly pointed out suffering animals to other employees and oblivious supervisors.

"I told one woman who had worked at Norco for 27 years that the birds had prolapsed egg vents, which were bleeding and painful," Aaron told a reporter.

"You mean their insides are coming out?" she asked in Spanish, recounts Aaron, conveying she had never heard of the condition before. "You should kill them but first ask the supervisor."

The supervisor said to kill them if "it wasn't too many."

While the animal rights community is cheering the sunset of battery cages in California under Prop 2 with other states expected to follow, cruel "euthanasia" of male chicks and spent hens and debeaking will continue with non caged egg production.

"To really address animal suffering, you have to go vegan," says Aaron.

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Martha Rosenberg is a Staff Cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable.

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