The meat industry is not the only market destructive to the health of animals. Our consumption of eggs is destroying the life of millions of chickens.
These chickens are first born in large incubators next to thousands of other chicks. Often they will never feel the grass, have a square foot to move around or see their own mothers. If this is not disturbing enough, due to the tight confinement they are all forced to urinate on each other, which often gives them ammonia poisoning. Then, as egg industries do not hire morticians for the cages, their carcasses are left to rot.
At birth the chickens are aggressively sorted and split up into females, whose beaks are to be immediately chopped off, and males, who are ground up on the spot.
In order for egg companies to turn profit they genetically modify the chicks to create 300 eggs per year, instead of their regular 17. Typically chickens live up to eight years, but because of the stress that is put on their bodies, their lives are usually cut short at 1 to 2 years.
In America especially, the media tells us eggs are essential to our health. They tell us that egg whites are low calorie and protein packed. They tell us we should eat them every day.
What they do not tell us, is what counts. Eggs are packed with cholesterol: one egg contains more cholesterol than a 10 ounce steak. What some do not know is that it is illegal to advertise as healthy. The FDA knows good and well that eggs, raw or not, cause 142 thousand cases of salmonella a year.
We have been over this before, but our bodies are not made to process these things because eggs are not food. They are essentially hen periods. Our essential nutrients do not need to, and should not, come from animal products.
Ignoring the health element, buying ‘free-range’, ‘non-GMO’, ‘local’ and ‘cage-free’ do not justify our consumption of these products.
In the United States there is no legal definition for ‘free-range’, except for the fact that hens are not kept in cages. Instead, they are forced into a crowded warehouse with thousands of others.
Labels like ‘local’, ‘farm fresh’ and ‘homegrown’ are not horrible things; however, health complications aside, it is simply unfair to chickens. They are intrinsically programed to fill their nests and if we keep taking away eggs they must lay more.
You may go to the grocery store and pick up an innocent crate of eggs, but just think about what goes into it.
I do not know whether the chicken or the egg came first, but either way, neither are for us to eat, especially considering the current ways in which both are produced for consumption.
Information provided by Peta and Freefromharm
– Emily Fuller – Video Editor –
