‘High’ Cost of Eggs Prompts Reality Check in Council Bluffs: ‘Hens Pay the Highest Price of All,’ Says PETA

For Immediate Release:
January 13, 2023

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Following local commentaries about groans and moans over the high cost of eggs—and because Iowa is reportedly the top egg-producing state in the U.S.—PETA plans to place a sky-high message downtown to remind everyone that a few more cents is nothing compared to what eggs cost hens: their lives. There’s no retirement home for hens exploited for their eggs, and in a typical year in the egg industry, millions of them are confined to filthy, cramped cages or giant windowless sheds until their overworked bodies give out—then they’re sent to the slaughterhouse. And they suffer in other ways, too: A staggering 57 million birds are dead due to the avian flu outbreak in the U.S. over the past year, and mass killing is the government’s policy during such crises.

“Nothing is less appetizing than a peek inside a factory farm’s chicken shed, where birds live in their own filth, as PETA’s investigative videos make clear,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is encouraging everyone to dig into delicious and nutritious vegan eggs, which are kind to birds and your bank account.”

PETA notes that after avian flu 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 adding carbon dioxide—suffocating and baking the birds to death, an agonizing process that can take hours.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a list of affordable vegan egg options on its website. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.