In response to the public’s growing awareness of animal cruelty in the egg-industry, the United Egg Producers (UEP), the industry’s primary trade association, created the “Animal Care Certified” (ACC) program in 2000. Today over 80% of the eggs found in supermarket aisles bear the deceptive ACC logo. The seal is aimed at assuring consumers that the eggs in the neatly packaged carton were produced humanely.

As Mercy For Animals’ new investigation exposes, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sadly, little has changed in the cruel way battery-caged hens are treated. Even the Better Business Bureau has called the ACC campaign “misleading” and has recommended that the UEP discontinue the label. Despite this recommendation, the UEP continues to use the logo, in effect deceiving consumers. The so-called "Animal Care Certified" guidelines permit producers to:

• Confine birds in cages so small they can’t even stretch their wings or engage in other natural behaviors such as nesting, perching, dust bathing, and foraging
• Starve birds in order to manipulate their egg-laying cycle &
• Burn off parts of chicks beaks without painkillers.

In November 2004, MFA investigators went behind the closed doors of Ohio Fresh Eggs, formerly Buckeye Egg Farm, in Croton, Ohio and emerged with shocking video and photographs that revealed the typical conditions inside an “Animal Care Certified” facility.

MFA investigators discovered:

• Hens with broken, damaged, and feces-covered feathers packed into battery cages so small they cannot spread their wings.
• Hens whose beaks had been painfully seared off with a hot blade.
• Hens suffering from bloody open wounds and untreated growths and infections.
• Hens who had become immobilized without access to water when their wings, head, neck, or feathers became trapped in the wire of the cage.
• Corpses left to rot in cages with birds still producing eggs for human consumption.
• A hen with the skin of her neck pierced by a piece of sharp wire on the top of her cage. The hen’s skin is shown slowly ripping off as the other hens jostle against her.
• A live hen in a trash can, left to die among carcasses.

The cruel conditions uncovered at OFE are, sadly, all too common. Over a dozen undercover investigations at egg farms in Ohio, Maryland, Minnesota, and New Jersey have all uncovered similar abuses. These facilities are not “bad apples”, but rather they represent accepted practices within the egg industry.

Ending institutionalized animal abuse is as simple as adopting a vegan diet. Click here for a free Vegetarian Starter Kit.