High Cost of Eggs Prompts Reality Check From PETA: ‘Hens Pay the Highest Price of All!’

For Immediate Release:
May 15, 2024

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Ionia, Mich. –

With Michigan under an extraordinary emergency order due to an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza—and after Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch Inc. and other farms in Ionia County killed nearly 6.5 million chickens because of the virus—PETA is placing a sky-high message near grocery stores in the area to honor the birds’ memory and remind everyone that the resulting higher price of eggs is nothing compared to what eggs cost hens: their lives. In the egg industry, millions of female birds are confined to filthy cages or giant windowless sheds until their overworked bodies give out and they’re sent to slaughterhouses.

“Whether they’re killed over avian flu fears or by a slaughterhouse knife, birds in the egg industry suffer and die on a massive scale, all for a fleeting moment of taste,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to opt for tofu scrambles, vegan eggs, and other animal-free meals that go easy on birds and bank accounts.”

Every chicken in a flock must be killed if even one has avian flu, and in 2023 alone, at least 58 million birds confined on farms were systematically killed to limit the spread of the virus. After outbreaks, workers slowly smother chickens to death with a water-based foam, gas them to death, or shut off all airflow in densely packed chicken sheds while raising the heat to as high as 120 degrees and sometimes adding carbon dioxide—suffocating and baking the birds to death, a slow, agonizing process that was reportedly the killing method employed by chicken farms in Ionia County.

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. The group offers a vegan egg replacer guide as well as a free vegan starter kit. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.