Did you eat scrambled eggs for breakfast? A bacon, egg and cheese? Then unless you raise your own chickens, and use only the eggs from your own coop, you might want to consider reading another story. Maybe check out this cool billboard made of thousands of hot sauce packets!
Nope? Still here? Don't say you weren't warned. Because we're about to dive right in.
Thursday morning, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), one of the country's most prominent advocates of animal rights, released a horrifying video taken undercover at Kreider Egg Farms, a major egg producer in Pennsylvania. The living conditions in the video were so deplorable that they moved New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof to dedicate an entire column to the subject after he saw an advance copy of the footage.
"Is an egg for breakfast worth this," Kristof asks in his headline.
You can answer that question for yourself, following your own sense of morality, after watching the video below. But it seems safe to assume that many people would be offended by Kreider Farms' treatment of the birds. They're crowded into tiny cages and surrounded by clouds of flies and ammonia gas. Dead chickens are left to rot, stuck in cages, for days. It's disgusting.
Kreider Egg Farms, for the record, has denied that the video accurately depicts conditions at its facilities.
If the true conditions are even half as bad as they look in the video, though, it seems like a worthwhile document nonetheless. A HSUS representative who appears in the video explains that the Society hopes the video will help convince people to speak out in support of a major animal welfare bill that will soon be debated in the House of Representatives. The bill would mandate larger cages and better living conditions for egg-laying hens, and has the support of both the HSUS and the United Egg Producers, the country's largest organization of egg-producing farms.
Below is the horrifying undercover video from Kreider Farms; keep in mind that it is very graphic before you decide to watch: