It’s time for the egg industry to stop cramming hens into cages!

Using hidden cameras, an undercover whistleblower with Mercy For Animals has exposed truly horrific animal abuse at Gray Ridge Egg Farms:

• Thousands of hens crammed inside cages for their entire lives, unable to freely walk, spread their wings, or rest comfortably
• Birds trapped in cage wire or under feed troughs, trampled by their cage mates and unable to reach food and water 
• Dead hens rotted beyond recognition left in cages with hens still laying eggs for human consumption
• Birds with swollen eyes, bleeding prolapses, extreme feather loss, and other serious afflictions denied proper veterinary care

From the day they hatch until the day they are violently killed, these hens experience nearly constant pain and misery. 

Perhaps the worst cruelty these sensitive and intelligent animals endure is a lifetime packed into cages. These cages are stacked in tiers inside giant windowless sheds. These poor animals can barely move around without stepping on or climbing over other hens. Denied nearly everything that comes naturally to them, including perching, they never get to see the sun, breathe fresh air, or feel the grass beneath their feet.

Caging hens is so cruel that nearly every major Canadian food retailer and restaurant chain, including Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, and Walmart, have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs.

Recently, the taxpayer-funded National Farm Animal Care Council released the highly anticipated Recommended Code of Practice for the treatment of egg-laying hens. Animal welfare advocates expected the code, which hadn’t been updated in more than ten years, to require producers to move toward cage-free housing systems to reflect the interests of Canadian taxpayers, consumers, grocers, and food producers, who have begun demanding such a switch.

Shockingly, the new code continues to allow the extreme confinement of egg-laying hens in wire cages—something that is widely regarded as one of the cruelest and most out-of-date factory farming practices in the world.

Now is the time to make your voice heard!

Please, take a moment to sign this petition urging the National Farm Animal Care Council to advise egg farmers to end their use of cages.