We went into the barns to remove the chickens which had grown too old to be productive egg- layers. The conditions in which the animals were kept was worse than any conditions I had seen in photos of Nazi concentration camps. The rough treatment in which the chickens had to endure as we yanked them from their small and overcrowded cages made me very angry. Although I needed a job at that time, I could not take it for more than a couple of weeks.

What I saw in the way other handlers treated birds that defecated on them out of complete terror, made me ashamed to have ever eaten meat and to have ever taken that job. I saw birds “punted” straight up to the roof of the barn by angry handlers. I saw birds that had fallen into what we called the “shit pit” (below the cages) left to die in the 3 to 4 feet of manure. I saw a pile of dead and near dead birds at the end of the day left in a stack at the end of the rows of cages. Their suffering must have been horrible.

Some of the birds necks had been pecked at by other birds until the neck bone was visible. This was not an uncommon sight. We (workers) used to talk about how the cries of the birds started to sound as if they were screaming “help.” I dare say that is not too far a stretch from the truth.

- Mitchell worked as a chicken handler at Croton Egg Farm in Croton, Ohio. The farm now operates under the name Ohio Fresh Eggs, the state’s largest egg producer.

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