My niece married into a family that has some of the largest egg farms in southern CA. She proudly gave me a tour of one of their facilities, in the early 2000's. 60,000 hens in his facility at that time and another 95,000 hens in his father's facility.
I was shocked. It was a huge, dark barn with probably hundreds of stacked cages. The cages were small, much smaller than an exhibition type single cage. There were four laying hens, literally crammed into each cage. None of the hens could stand on their own two feet. Some of them were able to have one foot to stand on, but the others were sitting on top of them, some sideways. There was a pile of dead hens at one end of the barn, about 4 feet high and ten feet wide. They had previously been cited for disposing of live hens by throwing them into a wood chipper. There was a horrible stench in the barn.
A year or two later, they had to depopulate because of Newcastle disease.
This business owner has no feelings of responsibility for the welfare or humane conditions of the hens in his care. I know this because when I asked him, he said that God put animals on this earth for our use. They are just tools to him. He thought it was funny that one of the workers taught his young daughter how to swing a chicken to break it's neck. He had her demonstrate this for us. No other purpose than for our amusement. Thrown into the pile afterwards.
After what I saw, I never bought another commercial egg, unless it had been raised cage free.
