What to do about battery hens?

Unfortunately, it seems like most of the large organizations that have lobbying power are against keeping animals for food, period. They are as likely to lobby laws that will prevent you and I from having our backyard flocks as they are to lobby for the humane treatment of commercial egg production birds.

I don't know of one off the top of my head that doesn't also lobby against rights I hold dear. I think education and the slow/local food movement is the best thing that can happen to the victims of giant commercial agriculture operations.

Reminding people that there are living creatures behind each and every egg they crack into their omelet and asking them to consider the source and vote with their dollars is a much better approach, IMO, than legislation. Legislating animal treatment can, unfortunately, be a slippery slope, and can often very quickly lead to limiting our rights as backyard flock owners.

 

There is one group that works tirelessly to decrease the number of battery hens.

BYC. I'm doing my part. It was awesome that just as my chooks started laying, the salmonella thing happened.

 

There is information about one -- **activist link removed**

 

Quote:This is one group that should be included in the BYC rule as "the ones we don't speak about."
If they had their way you would not be raising chickens for eggs or meat and they would actually
prefer you did not even own chickens.

 

Having looked at the website, it's fairly clear that they don't actually care about the welfare of the animals currently in 'farms', they are only using it as a shock factor to further their own goals.
Their goal, it would appear, is to convert the world to Veganism and do away with all domesticated animals.
I don't think these people would be supporters of BYC in any way whatsoever and certainly nothing in their website suggests that they would be in favor of more humane conditions for 'farm' animals.

Didn't the US have a salmonella outbreak a couple of years ago related to tomatoes? What's the deal with tomatoes these days? Has anything changed, are tomatoes still being kept in small fields with no ability to roam free. Are they still being mechanically slaughtered, sometimes frozen to death. Do they still heard them into tiny boxes and put them on trains and trucks for their 'final' processing destination?

While the world wants cheap eggs and chicken meat (and tomatoes), factory farms are the only way to do it. I'm not advocating that way of farming but it meets the consumers demands and that is what business is all about.