Deadly Fire at Pine Hill Egg Ranch Prompts PETA Memorial for Chickens

For Immediate Release:
July 23, 2024

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

In honor of the approximately 70,000 hens who burned to death when a massive fire broke out at Pine Hill Egg Ranch on Thursday, PETA plans to place a memorial billboard in the area pointing out who’s responsible for their deaths: everyone who still buys eggs.

Even though there initially had been concerns that the blaze could spread to other nearby sheds holding chickens, animal advocates who arrived at the scene after the fire began were told that there was no plan to evacuate the birds. Pine Hill Egg Ranch, which is owned by Demler Brothers Egg Ranch, has long been the subject of complaints about foul odors, piles of dead chickens, and impacted well water from residents who live near the facility. Late last year, Pine Hill Egg Ranch was hit with a cease and desist order from the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board following a report that contaminated wastewater from the company’s facilities had gotten into stormwater basins and two nearby creeks.

“Every hen who died in this fire was a thinking, feeling individual who endured a life of misery and pain, jam-packed into a filthy shed and treated as nothing more than a disposable machine,” says PETA Senior Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA urges everyone to help prevent birds from being crammed by the tens of thousands into flammable warehouses in the first place by going vegan.”

Hens used for egg production are confined to cramped barns, where each bird typically has no more than a square foot of space. When hens’ bodies wear out and they’re no longer considered profitable, egg producers stuff them into metal boxes and crudely gas them with carbon dioxide, which is terrifying and painful—or send them to slaughterhouses, where workers slit their throats, often while they’re still conscious, and scald many to death in defeathering tanks.

Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year; reduces their own risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity; and dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.