Oral Statement by MFA Director Nathan Runkle
Presented at the Mercy For Animals Press Conference

Good morning and thank you everyone for joining us. My name is Nathan Runkle, and I am the Executive Director of Mercy For Animals, a non-profit Ohio animal advocacy organization.

In response to the public’s growing awareness and sensitivity toward animal cruelty in the egg-industry, the United Egg Producers, the industry’s primary trade association, created the “Animal Care Certified” voluntary program in 2000. Today, the eggs produced by 228 million factory-farmed hens, over 80% of those found in supermarket aisles, bear a deceptive “Animal Care Certified” logo. The seal, complete with a jaunty check mark, is aimed at assuring consumers that the eggs in the neatly packaged carton were produced humanely.

Despite its lofty sounding name, the so-called Animal Care Certified guidelines permit producers to:

• Confine birds in cages so small they can’t even stretch their wings, let alone engage in other natural behaviors, such as nesting, perching, dust bathing, and foraging.
• Starve birds for up to 12 days, or until they lose 30% of their body weight, in order to manipulate the egg-laying cycle in a cruel practice known as “forced molting.” Poultry researcher Dr. Ian Duncan calls forced molting “a barbaric practice which doubles mortality in the flock while it is going on and leads to great suffering in all the hens involved.”
• Burn off parts of chicks’ beaks without painkillers to combat aggression induced by stressful and crowded living conditions. Chickens’ beaks are very sensitive and this practice leads to both acute and chronic pain.

The Better Business Bureau has twice ruled, in 2002 and 2003, that the United Egg Producers Animal Care Certified campaign is “misleading” and recommended the use of the logo be discontinued. The Better Business Bureau has since referred the case to the Federal Trade Commission for possible legal enforcement. Despite these rulings and referral, the United Egg Producers continues to use the logo which deceives consumers.

In November 2004, following stringent bio-security standards taken from the poultry industry's own publications, a team of Mercy For Animals investigators went undercover behind the closed doors of Ohio Fresh Eggs, formerly Buckeye Egg Farm, in Croton, Ohio. Ohio Fresh Eggs is the state’s largest Animal Care Certified facility. Our investigators emerged with shocking video footage and photographs revealing case after case of egregious animal cruelty, neglect, and abuse inside this “Animal Care Certified” facility.

Investigators discovered:

• hens caked in feces, packed into crowded, filthy wire cages so small they could not spread a wing,
• diseased hens suffering from untreated growths, infections, and bloody open wounds and scratches,
• hens trapped in the wire of their cages, left to die without access to food or water,
• dead bodies left to rot in cages with birds still producing eggs for human consumption, and
• a live hen thrown away in a trash can filled with rotting corpses.

Like nearly 98% of the hens raised for egg production in the United States, the hens at Ohio Fresh Eggs are confined to "battery cages"-- small wire cages stacked in tiers and lined up in rows in huge windowless warehouses.

The United Egg Producer’s Animal Care Certified guidelines require that hens be given just 67 square inches of living space. With up to seven hens per cage, each bird is allowed less than half a square foot of space, less than 3/4 the area of a standard 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper. It takes approximately 303 square inches for a hen to fully stretch her wings.

Hens confined in battery cages live day in and day out without ever seeing the sun. The ability to walk freely, fully stretch their wings, perch, roost, or dust bathe, become impossible tasks. The battery cage frustrates every natural instinct and reduces these naturally clean animals to living in the excrement of their cagemates.

Due primarily to abrasion against the wire of their cages, and the continuous assault by the trampling of other hens, many of the birds suffer from severe feather damage including missing wing and tail feathers. The lack of feathers means that the bird’s skin is at high risk of injury from pecking and scratching.

Sickness and disease are inherent problems in factory farm systems where birds are forced to live in filth and extreme confinement. In an attempt to minimize costs and maximize profit, even the sickest of hens are denied veterinary care.

Forcing a naturally physical bird to spend her life in a cramped and stationary position causes several health problems such as: muscle degeneration, poor blood circulation, osteoporosis, and foot and leg deformities. Numerous other health problems plague hens on factory farms. At Ohio Fresh Eggs, investigators documented birds suffering from such untreated illnesses as raging eye and sinus infections, mechanical feather damage, wing hemetones, and bloody open wounds and scratches.

The high emission of ammonia, created by massive manure pits below the battery-cages, contributes to the spread of disease and infection for the hens above. This toxic ammonia from the decomposing uric acid produces a painful corneal ulcer condition in the chickens. This is known as "ammonia burn," a condition that sometimes leads to blindness.

Investigators discovered hens who had became immobilized when their heads, bodies, or feathers become caught in the wire of the cages or under the feeding trays. Once trapped, it is nearly impossible for the hens to free themselves. These animals were clearly unable to access food or water, for unknown lengths of time, leaving the birds at great risk of dying slowly from dehydration or starvation. Many dead hens were documented trapped in such conditions.

Investigators discovered one hen with the skin on her neck impaled by a loose piece of wire on the top of her cage. The situation worsened as her crowded cage-mates jostled against her. The more they moved, the more her neck ripped apart, causing a large laceration that exposed the underlying muscles and veins. Further, the hen was unable to reach water or food and her condition made breathing difficult. Had an MFA investigator not intervened and provided aid to this hen, later named Jenna, she was at great risk of dying from dehydration and infection.

Jenna is one of three hens openly rescued by MFA investigations.

The rescued hens were taken to a farmed animal sanctuary were they could live free from the torment of the battery cage. For the first time in their lives, they had the opportunity to walk freely, dust bathe, and roost at night, all behaviors they could not fulfill while confined to their filthy cage at Ohio Fresh Eggs.

Over 280 million other factory-farmed, egg-laying hens are not so lucky.

Due to filthy living conditions and a lack of basic care, the egg industry has extremely high mortality rates. According to a report by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, for every 700,000 hens in a modern egg facility, 1,500 birds die each and every week in their cages. The factory “farmers” disregard the health and welfare of the individual animals, as they consider the number that will die in their profit calculations. The hens at Ohio Fresh Eggs are no exception.

At Ohio Fresh Eggs, MFA investigators discovered many hens who had succumbed to untreated sickness, disease, or injuries who were left to slowly decompose in cages with live birds. Their cagemates, still producing eggs for human consumption, are forced to live with the stench and insects this environment creates. Such conditions pose a serious disease risk to the other hens.

Investigators also documented numerous trash cans filled with dead hens.

Those hens who survive the battery cage are killed once their egg production declines, usually after one to two years. Many are either slaughtered for low-grade chicken meat products or disposed of by being thrown alive into grinding machines or suffocated in plastic bags or dumpsters.

We will now present a short, 10-minute video illustrating the conditions documented during this investigation. I will then be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

(SHOW INVESTIGATION VIDEO)

To the shock of many consumers, the cruelty documented at Ohio Fresh Eggs is standard egg industry practice. This is the fourth investigation since 2001 conducted by Mercy For Animals at an Ohio egg farm that has exposed egregious animal cruelty. Other recent investigations at egg farms in Maryland, Minnesota, Colorado, and New Jersey have all uncovered similar abuses.

Chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals and are thought to be as intelligent as mammals like cats and dogs and even primates. They form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, and protect their young. Like us, hens are sentient individuals who feel pain and have desires. They deserve protection and have a right to live free of exploitation.

Consumers hold enormous power in ending the blatant abuse of factory-farmed animals. We are calling on Americans of conscience to take a stand against unspeakable animal cruelty by refusing to buy eggs.

We are calling on our government to stop ignoring the plight of factory-farmed animals. Currently, hens on factory farms have virtually no legal protection from even the worse abuses. In fact, birds are specifically exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act, most anti-cruelty laws, and are not even considered “animals” under the Animal Welfare Act. Banning battery cages in the United States, something the European Union, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have already done, is the first step to eradicating the view of animals as mere commodities. This view has led to enormous and unconscionable suffering.

We are also calling on the Cincinnati-based Kroger Corporation, the largest grocery store chain in America, to stop misleading consumers by removing the deceptive “Animal Care Certified” logo from its egg cartons. Although Kroger’s own Policy on Business Ethics states that “customers deserve clear and accurate advertising that provides useful information to assist in the purchase decision,” it continues to ignore two Better Business Bureau rulings that declared the ACC logo “misleading” because of the cruel practices allowed under the guidelines.

On February 22, 2005 Mercy For Animals sent a certified letter, along with video footage and photographs from this investigation, to Mr. David B. Dillon the Chairman and CEO of the Kroger Corporation urging him to remove the Animal Care Certified seal on grounds of consumer fraud and take steps to improve the conditions of the hens who produce eggs sold at his stores. We have yet to receive a response from Mr. Dillion.

That concludes our news conference, I will now be happy to answer any questions you may have.