The NGO Animal Equality has released an appalling undercover video highlighting the suffering of hens living in a factory farm in Jalisco.
The video shows horrific images of overcrowding in battery cages, chickens sharing cages with others that are dying, sick and injured, hens with their beaks mutilated and undergoing forced molting.
Jalisco boasts more than half of Mexico’s total egg production, much of it based in the northeastern Los Altos region of the state. The location of the Jalisco farm in the video is not disclosed.
According to Animal Equality, the practice of forced molting is widespread in Mexico. This is a process in which farmers artificially provoke a flock to molt simultaneously, typically by withdrawing food for 7–14 days and sometimes withdrawing water for three days. Forced molting is usually implemented when egg-production is naturally decreasing toward the end of the first egg-laying phase. During the forced molt, the birds cease producing eggs for at least two weeks, which allows the bird’s reproductive tracts to regress and rejuvenate. After the molt, the hen’s egg production rate usually peaks slightly lower than the previous peak, but egg quality is improved. The purpose of forced molting is to increase egg production, egg quality and profitability of flocks in their second or subsequent laying phases.
“Hens who survive this tortuous process often lose up to 20 percent of their body weight. Many others die in agony,” says Animal Inequality.
Forced molting is controversial and while it has been a widespread practice in the United States, it is prohibited in the European Union.
However, recent campaigns by animal welfare groups in the United States to replace aging egg production facilities with cage-free systems are proving successful.
According to the Washington Post, in the past two years nearly 200 U.S. companies – including every major grocery and fast-food chain that together buy half of the seven billion eggs laid monthly – have pledged to use only cage-free eggs by 2025. WATTAgNet.com, a leading agribusiness web portal, says the number of companies in the United States and Canada that have pledged to source only cage-free eggs has grown exponentially during the first four months of 2016.
Efforts for similar change south of the border seem to lie in the hands of a few animal advocacy groups such as Animal Equality.
Says Dulce Ramirez, Animal Equality’s executive director in Mexico: “Several of Mexico’s largest food companies have already made commitments to phase out these cruel and archaic cages, avoiding the risk of falling behind competition since these inhumane conditions are completely out of step with the values we share as Mexicans. Society has a right to know how what they are consuming is produced, so that they can make compassionate decisions.”
In its recent video, Animal Equality shows hens in Jalisco farms that have had their beaks mutilated a few days after they are born to prevent attacks from other hens in the stressful conditions. These hens are forced to survive in cramped cages for up to two years without any veterinary care provided when they get sick.
Animal Equality describes itself as an “international farmed animal advocacy organization that is dedicated to defending all animals through public education, campaigns and investigations,” working to “create a more just and compassionate world for animals.” They are currently active in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela and India.
For more information or to donate to their cause, go to animalequality.net. To view the video see “Life Inside a Battery Cage on a Mexican Hen Farm” on YouTube.