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Yesterday, a disturbing video landed in my inbox from Mercy for Animals (MFA), an animal-rights organization. Shot with a hidden camera by an undercover worker at Hy-Line Hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, (the largest hatchery for egg-laying breed chicks in the US), the footage shows thousands of tiny baby chicks - all males - being ground up alive. Sadly, this is standard industry practice and considered humane by several regulatory agencies.
Male chicks are targeted because they don't lay eggs and don't grow big enough to produce meat so ... off they go. At the Hy-Line Hatchery, 150,000 male chicks are ground up every day - 130 million a year. This daily butchering is just business-as-usual to get those cheap eggs to market. Exhibit A:
Average price of a dozen eggs in 2009 - $2.89.
Average price of a dozen organic eggs in 2009 - $4.89.
"Since the undercover video by Mercy For Animals, a vegan advocacy and animal rights organization, was made public, many have expressed shock that male chicks, considered non-profitable to the egg industry, are killed shortly after hatching. The practice, however, is not news within the agricultural industry where 'instantaneous euthanasia' is carried out daily. Rural experts contend that most Americans are too far removed from family farming, much less the agricultural industry, to know and/or understand why certain practices which appear cruel are continued."
--Lynda Waddington, Iowa Independent
The video also shows a debeaking machine where surviving female chicks are inserted, dangling by their beaks, into a laser cutter where burns are inflicted to make the beak fall off in a week. Now that the video has made the rounds, feathers are flying.
While I knew intellectually that this type of thing went on, seeing it on film is a whole other matter. I couldn't get over how the workers roughly handled the baby chicks like they were apples or potatoes. There is a specific position called a "sexer" that separates the boys from the girls - flipping the boys (I assume) by their heads into a giant metal chute. I'm sorry, but if you can't empathize with a newborn baby - a baby anything - then I have to assume a bit of your soul has died somewhere along the way. The video did not make me proud of my species, to put it lightly.
But it does no good to demonize the workers, who are merely doing a job to provide for their own families. Nor does it help to crucify the egg producers who are in the business of providing what the market (me, you and that guy over there) demand: Cheap eggs. This is the ugly side of corporate agriculture and .... actually, I have yet to find a pretty side.
Since the video's release, an independent audit commissioned by the corporate owners of the Spencer hatchery has concluded that some of the practices depicted by an undercover video are, in fact, not standard operating procedure and are in violation of the company’s animal welfare policy. The (nameless) auditor's concluding statement:
"In conclusion, I am impressed with the commitment to animal care by Hy-Line and its employees here in Iowa. The equipment, practices and handling of chicks at the Hy-Line hatchery in Spencer, Iowa are consistent with customary industry husbandry practices and exceed animal welfare standards in a number of areas.
However, these independent audits confirm that some of the practices at our Spencer, Iowa facility depicted in the undercover video did not reflect the standard operating procedures of our company and are in direct violation of our animal welfare policy. One scene in the video depicted a bypass of the instantaneous euthanasia process and was a direct and clear violation of both the authorized animal handling procedures and our welfare policies."
Yeesh.
So, while the industry deals with being naked and exposed, what can consumers do on our end? As Americans, we all know that money talks. What are our options here?
#1- Go Vegan: While I get lots of help from my own garden, the amazing SusanV, Trader Joe's Vegan Trail Mix cookies and Cafe Gratitude - I can't see myself taking this road until I fully conquer the vegetarian thing. If you are looking for info, check out GoVeg - a fantastic resource. I'm always surprised how many yummy options there are.
