The life of an egg-laying chicken in the U.S., or one of 301 million others like her, normally lasts 12 to 18 months, during which she produces up to 450 eggs. But what happens after that, when she's no longer considered profitable by the egg industry?
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According to a new investigation, the life of a "spent" bird — the industry's term for a hen who's no longer used for her eggs — is short and not so sweet. While the vast majority of spent hens are killed on the site of the actual farm, a small portion are instead sent to slaughter facilities where they can be turned into low-grade meat for pet food or human consumption.
An undercover investigator spent 57 days working at one of these facilities, Butterfield Foods Co. in Butterfield, Minn., filming workers receiving thousands of birds from open-air transportation trucks and hanging them by their feet on metal hooks. The birds are then passed by a machine meant to cut their throats before entering a "scalding tank" that removes their feathers. But, as the investigator witnessed, many birds miss the knife and enter the tank alive and fully conscious. When this happens, these so-called "red birds" turn bright pink, because their blood is still inside their bodies. The investigator documented 45 of these red birds in a half-hour period.
READ MORE: https://www.thedodo.com/egg-laying-hen-slaughter-914943443.html?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_article
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