Get Your FREE Egg Carton Truth Labels
Order these FREE egg carton peel-off stickers to help spread awareness of misleading labels used to market animal-derived foods—which are always the result of extreme violence and cruelty.
Place these peel-off stickers on cartons of “cage-free” eggs at home (if a family member still eats eggs), and hand them out to anyone you know who buys eggs. You can also get creative with them! What other uses can you come up with?
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We can send free shipments only to addresses in the U.S. and Canada, while supplies last. For other resources in your area, please visit one of these PETA entities:
- PETA Asia
- PETA Australia
- PETA France
- PETA Germany
- PETA India
- PETA Latino
- PETA Netherlands
- PETA Switzerland
- PETA U.K.
Spread the Word: ‘Cage-Free’ Isn’t Cruelty-Free
Approximately 346 million hens are used by the U.S. egg industry every year. Whether or not the eggs are labeled “cage-free,” most birds in the industry are subjected to intensive confinement, painful mutilations, and filthy living conditions. They spend their short lives in complete misery. Those who survive these horrid conditions are sent to slaughter and endure the same horrifying death as chickens killed for their flesh do.
These facts about eggs might surprise you, but the proof is hiding in plain sight—we’re just here to make sure you see it.
1. Chickens Used for Eggs Are Killed
Most hens used for their eggs spend their lives in tiny battery cages, crammed in with other hens, barely able to move. Some of them die and rot in the cages, and the others are forced to live right next to their bodies. Let’s say a farm raises “free-range” or “cage-free” chickens. These labels just mean that the hens were packed into a massive, filthy, dark warehouse by the thousands instead of being kept in cages. Like hens confined to cages, those raised on farms that use these deceiving labels are bred in factories—where the male chicks are thrown alive into grinders and the females are debeaked, which means that a portion of their beak is seared off. All these hens—no matter what type of farm they’re raised on—are slaughtered when they’re no longer producing eggs at a profitable rate. The vast majority of them are killed in violent, terrifying, and painful ways. PETA eyewitnesses have seen workers slamming chickens against trucks, stuffing them into boxes to be gassed, leaving them to die in piles of feces, and committing many other horrific acts of abuse.
2. Chickens Are Highly Intelligent Animals
Leading animal behavior scientists know that chickens are inquisitive and have cognitive abilities that are on par with those of cats, dogs, and even some primates. They use more than 30 types of vocalizations just to distinguish between threats, pass down their knowledge from generation to generation, can remember the faces and ranks of more than 100 other birds, and are capable of so much more. But since when did we base someone’s right to live on their intelligence, anyway? If an individual can suffer (and chickens obviously can), shouldn’t that alone be reason enough not to hurt them? Yes—the answer is a resounding yes.
3. Eggs Aren’t Healthy
Egg suppliers that are subsidized by the government are banned—by the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself—from advertising eggs as “healthy,” “nutritious,” “a rich source of protein,” or even “safe.” That’s because one egg has about 187 mg of cholesterol—which is more than twice the amount in a Big Mac (which has 79 mg). They’re also high in fat and saturated fat—most of their calories come from fat, and they can be contaminated with salmonella. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, consuming eggs can increase your risk of developing heart disease by 19 percent, colon cancer by nearly five times, diabetes by 68 percent, and prostate cancer by 81 percent.
To sum up what we’re saying, eggs are not part of a balanced breakfast (and advertisers aren’t even allowed to claim that they are). So, what’s left to redeem eggs as food? Pretty much nothing. But we CAN replace them! Tofu scrambles are delicious, healthy, and actually high in protein.
It’s a really exciting time to avoid paying for chickens to be tortured and killed for their eggs. Encourage others to join the cruelty-free fun by ordering these peel-off stickers and placing them on egg cartons!
