Chickens have been well recognised as an intelligent, social and cooperative species for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Sadly, their social cooperation and ability to organise themselves in a ‘pecking order’, is one of the main reasons they were easy to domesticate and be used as a 'food' source by humans.
A hen’s average natural lifespan is around 5 to 8 years old, but they can live up to 12 years. Hens who are farmed for eggs will be slaughtered for 'cheap meat' at between 72 and 86 weeks (around a year and a half), when they are ‘spent’ and their egg laying diminishes.
Over 12 billion eggs are eaten in the UK every year. 90% of these come from the 40 million hens farmed in the UK. The remaining 10% come from other countries, including the US, Spain and Poland.
In 2022, 28% of eggs produced in the UK came from colony-caged farms, 7% came from barn farms, and 65% came from free-range farms (including 4% organic).
After sustained pressure from animal welfare groups, most supermarkets, brands and food companies in the UK have committed to making all of their eggs cage-free by 2025. Companies currently using colony cages will transition to barn or free-range systems. However, since there won’t be any legal, or legislative change, it is expected that 8 million hens will still remain in cages post-2025.
Whilst the EU commission intends to ban cages for all farmed animals by 2027, and Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Germany have already committed to banning cages for egg-laying hens, the UK government has made no such move despite recognising that "‘enriched’ colony cage system restricts a bird’s ability to exhibit normal behaviours’".
However, those who will be raised in barn or free-range systems instead, don’t have anything better to look forward to.
A far cry from their wildfowl ancestors who roam jungles all over the globe, hens have been turned into scrawny egg machines – their only 'purpose' being to be kept alive long enough to lay as many eggs as possible for human consumption.
Whether the eggs you buy are from ‘enriched’ cages, barns or free-range, they come from hens who spend most of their lives inside, in crowded sheds, stressed, bored and suffering, only to be caught and slaughtered for cheap meat when they are ‘spent’ at around 18 months old.
Caged, barn or free-range, male chicks are still gassed shortly after hatching as a ‘by-product’ of the industry, because males will never have the ability to lay eggs and be profitable for the industry.
All egg-laying hens from caged to organic will still be caught and killed at a fraction of their natural lifespan. Hens are either kept in enriched cages, cage-free inside a barn, free-range or on organic farms. Let’s take a look…
Battery cages in the UK were banned in 2012 and converted to ‘enriched’ colony cages. These cages cram in between 40 and 80 hens per cage, giving each hen a total of 750cm2 of space each – not much more than an A4 sheet of paper. Each shed on a colony cage farm can pack in tens of thousands of hens.
Despite the welfare promises of an ‘enriched’ life where hens can carry out their natural behaviours, the sad reality is, there is no meaningful ‘enrichment’ in the so-called 'enriched' cage.
Every cage must have one nesting box, a dust bath and perches. With up to 80 hens per cage, many of these hens never get to use their ‘enrichments’.
Far from rich, these poor hens spend their short miserable lives standing on faeces-covered wire mesh floors, under artificial lighting, crammed in with others, barely able to move or stretch their wings.
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As many UK supermarkets and food companies commit to going cage-free, many colony cages will be replaced with barn systems.
Far from the rustic, rural idyll shown on egg boxes, barn eggs actually come from huge, stinking, overcrowded sheds called ‘percheries’. The metal ‘perch’ can be shared by up to nine hens per square metre, and hens must be provided with a measly two enrichments per 1,000 hens. These monstrous barns can pack in up to 6,000 hens.
The consumer appetite for free-range eggs has grown in recent years, as it’s seen as the ‘higher welfare’ option. This is bolstered by images on egg boxes and on TV ads of hens roaming happily in fields. Sadly, this is far from the truth of how most hens live.
Contrary to the industry’s clever marketing, most free-range hens spend the majority of their lives in vast, overcrowded sheds, similar to barn hens. The main difference is, to be certified as free-range, hens must have continuous daytime access to outdoor runs. The government’s minimum requirement for this is one pop hole per 800 hens. Hens can be aggressively territorial and therefore the more dominant hens will guard these pop holes, meaning that many will never go outside. With the rise of Avian flu (bird flu), free-range hens are kept in lockdown, unable to access the outdoors, for months at a time during disease outbreaks.
Using cutting-edge drone videography, we filmed multiple free-range farms keeping hens locked indoors for two or three days in a row, breaching guidelines and deceiving consumers.
Hens in organic systems are given an extra 3cm of perch space compared to barn and free-range hens. They can still cram in up to six hens per square metre, with up to 3,000 birds living in one shed. Preventative debeaking is not allowed in organic farms, so feather pecking can be prevalent. Hens on organic farms still face crowded barns, unsanitary conditions and are still killed at a fraction of their natural lifespan.
Since the chicken breed used for egg-laying, has been selectively bred to lay eggs, and not to produce maximum ‘meat’ from their flesh, male chicks have absolutely no purpose in the egg industry.
They are therefore ‘disposed of’ via gassing within 24 hours of hatching. It’s estimated that 29 million day-old chicks per year have their lives taken away at this pitifully young age. Whilst both France and Germany are in the process of banning this practice, of using in-ovo egg sexing technology, UK supermarkets have so far shown little interest in using this, apparently owing to a ‘lack of consumer demand’. Instead, their lives are taken away before it’s even had a chance to begin.
Today’s farmed hens have been selectively bred to lay an average of 300 eggs a year – 30 times more than their ancestors would have. This puts immense pressure on their bodies, leading to injury and disease. Egg peritonitis is a major cause of death in egg-laying hens. It is caused by a bacterial infection in the laying duct which makes it very difficult and painful for a hen to expel her egg, and the egg is laid internally in the abdomen. Without treatment, this will cause death.
Many hens suffer from keel bone (sternum) fractures which cause them pain and can severely limit their movement. This is caused by the keel bone not forming properly, or breaking, due to the large amount of calcium taken for a hen to produce so many eggs.
Stress, boredom and lack of space, mean that feather pecking is abundant, leading to feather loss, exposed and sore patches of skin and, in some cases, cannibalism. In an attempt to prevent this, most hens (other than organic) are debeaked when they are tiny chicks. This involves using an infrared laser to remove up to a third of their highly sensitive beak. Being debeaked can make red mites, which suck the blood of hens and cause skin irritation, even more problematic, as it diminishes the hen's ability to preen themselves.
The staggering numbers of hens kept in one space mean that diseases spread quickly. Infectious Bronchitis (IB) can lead to the deaths of a quarter of the birds in a shed.
Since 2021, more than eight million chickens on farms, have been ‘culled’ due to Avian Influenza. This has also led to the mass ‘housing order’ of all domesticated chickens in the UK, both those on farms and those kept as companions, who, regardless of whether they were ‘free-range’, ‘organic’; or ‘backyard’ chickens, were kept inside for six months to prevent infection.
Violent ‘gangs’, which is the term that catching groups are referred to within the industry, are employed to round-up the thousands of hens imprisoned inside egg farms. We have filmed RSPCA Assured catching company AD Harvey, across multiple farms, including at a ‘free-range’ site which was also RSPCA Assured. Hens were kicked, thrown, hit with feeders and crushed with crates. They were viciously slammed into loading crates, trapping their heads and wings. Injured, dead and dying hens littered the shed floor after the ‘depopulation’ process had finished.
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