The Suffering of Cage-Free Eggs

There's a reason for cages By Anthony Rust, Rose Acres Farms  The chickens of California are the latest victims of Paul Shapiro and the Humane Society of the U.S Factory Farming Campaign. It is cruel to subject chickens to the less humane and substandard conditions the so-call animal rights people want. Hens die 2 to 3 times as fast under the cage-free conditions championed by the so-called animal rights people. This is a proven fact, and gathered data provides this. What looks good to humans does not work as well for chickens. Safety pens (cages) protect hens from killing one another, eating their own feces, big temperature changes and diseases caused by lack of protection other systems fail to provide. We quit using the systems wanted by the so-called animal rights people when we found that cages worked better for the hens. This was 40-50 years ago. We recently tried these systems again and they still don't work as well as cages for hens. Only those that are clueless, those that have been lied to or those who are misguided about hen welfare want to ban cages. Knowledgeable and caring people want to keep hens in cages until a better system is found because having hens in cages is the right thing to do for the chickens. It does seem to be true that cage-free eggs as we produce it in the U.S. is no better than caged eggs. However, there are cage-free methods that provide higher standards of care. These better methods are costly, which is why no one uses them.