If you have ever wanted to take a stand against animal abuse, this is your chance. The first thing you ought to do today is stop paying for eating the eggs or meat of a tortured animal from factory farms.

More than 120 million egg-laying hens in India are confined in wire battery cages stacked one on top of the other, where each hen has about the space of a single sheet of A4 size paper to spend her whole life. Throughout their life, they are confined to cages so small that they cannot even spread their wings. They are denied nearly everything that comes naturally to them be it perching, dust-bathing or laying eggs in nest boxes. They never feel the warmth of the sunlight, or the grass beneath their feet. A chicken’s beak loaded with nerve endings is chopped off with hot iron rods without painkillers to avoid mortality from infighting and cannibalism. Hens are known to develop severe disorders due to restriction of movement, lack of exercise and excess deposits of fat in liver and abdomen. In natural environment, hens can live to 10-15 years but hens bred for egg-laying are so inhumanely treated that their ability to produce eggs declines at just 12 to 18 months of age.

More than 90% of eggs in India are from battery cages. Around the world, major corporations are changing their policies by switching from eggs from battery cages to those in cage-free facilities. McDonald’s has recently committed to switch to procurement to 100% cage-free eggs within its supply chain in United States, South Africa and Canada. However, there has been no such action from them in India. There is no reason why they should not adopt a similar policy in India. Ask Mc Donald’s India to adopt a cage free policy by ending battery cages by 2017, a deadline given to all the states by the Animal Board of India. Such a move will go a long way in safeguarding the interest of 120 million egg-laying hens, the biggest number of animals treated cruelly in India and the most ignored.

Smt. Poonam Mahajan, Member of Parliament, BJP, on behalf of People for Animals has sent a letter to Amit Jatia, CEO McDonald’s, India urging them to go cage-free.

Together, we can show McDonalds that we are against confining animals in small cages for their entire lives.