Video: Hens Trapped in Feces Swamp, Caged With Rotting Corpses on Filthy Egg Farms

Actor Kat Graham Narrates PETA Exposé Video Revealing Suffering and Death of Hens on Three Abbotsford Egg Farms

For Immediate Release:
June 26, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

A breaking PETA video exposé—which was first reported on yesterday evening by CTV Vancouver and is narrated by actor Kat Graham—reveals horrific neglect and filthy conditions on three egg farms in Abbotsford. The footage shows hens stuck in mounds of feces teeming with maggots and left for dead, forced to live inside cramped wire cages next to the rotting corpses of their dead cagemates, and left virtually featherless with exposed quills—likely because of the stress of severe crowding and neglect.

“Dying by drowning in a manure pit isn’t how most people picture hens on an egg farm,” says PETA Director of Evidence Analysis Daniel Paden. “PETA wants shoppers to consider the gentle birds entombed in feces and caged with rotting corpses and leave eggs on the supermarket shelf.”

Hundreds of dead birds, along with dozens of hens who were emaciated and barely alive, were found abandoned in manure pits with no food, water, or care. They were packed so closely together inside stacked cages that they couldn’t spread their wings and those above had no choice but to urinate and defecate on the ones below. One hen’s cloaca was prolapsed, a very painful—and sometimes fatal—condition often caused by a poor diet or the strain of laying far more eggs than is natural. Others suffered from inflamed feet—the result of standing on wire flooring without any relief—and powerful ammonia fumes caused by the accumulation of excrement irritated the hens’ lungs and burned their skin.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that more than 20 million hens are currently held on egg farms in Canada, with each operation keeping an average of more than 22,000 birds. This video footage was captured by eyewitness Jeff Rigear and others on farms that on-site documents identified as Cloverhill Farms, Jaedel Enterprises, and Sonmark Enterprises.

Broadcast-quality photographs and video footage are available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.