Liar, Liar Your Barn Is On Fire: The 50,000 Hens Who Burnt To Death

The fire that claimed the lives of around 50,000 hens at an intensive egg-laying farm in Orini is devastating. Thankfully there were no injuries to the humans at the site. The same cannot be said of the thousands of hens who suffered a painful and frightening death that is beyond imaginable.

Trapped in a barn from which there was no escape, these birds were burnt alive.

The farm at Orini is owned by New Zealand’s largest egg producer Zeagold. On their website Zeagold says that ‘our modern laying farms have been designed around the best practice and technology from Europe and the UK which are at the forefront on laying hen operations’.

It begs the question as to why sprinklers and fire alarms not built into this technological masterpiece? I am a member of the public (not an egg eating one) but a member of the public nonetheless. I believe that the public needs to raise questions (and get genuine answers) around how animal-based food gets on their plates and what suffering has occurred as a result. It is a matter of public interest as many people care about animals.

Industries that make their profits from the lives of animals know that their reputation needs to be carefully managed. The term ‘welfare washing’ refers to the mechanisms industries use to obscure the realities behind production of animal products including meat, milk and eggs.

In the egg industry the notion of happy and healthy flocks of hens is an example of welfare washing. Just because you can keep an animal alive in a confined space for a short fraction of their natural life span, does not mean they are happy or healthy. Hens in cages (whether battery of colony) have their natural urges to scratch, dust bathe and stretch their wings denied.

When welfare washing becomes impossible (as in the case of the hens who burned to death at the Orini farm) another response by industry is to ignore the issue and deflect attention away from the hens’ suffering. This is a covert attempt to render the appalling suffering invisible by default.

The immediate media response from Zeagold chief executive John McKay is to reassure the public that the fire won’t have a ‘significant impact on supply’. This offers a distraction to the public and refocuses their attention on their own needs (and not that of the hens who have died).

And isn’t that at the root of all production and consumption of animal products? We put our own needs at the forefront, denying the animals even the sun on their backs.

Laying hens in New Zealand are routinely crammed into cages where they are expected to lay an egg every 24 hours. They are kept in captivity to lay eggs between 18 weeks and 90 weeks of age. At around 90 weeks (18-20 months) they are then sent off to be killed.

Their deaths are as devastating as their short lives. Male chicks in New Zealand who are useless to the egg industry are shredded in a macerator at one day of age. This is akin to placing a baby chick in a blender and turning it on.

And it is legal. Legal does not mean humane.

Hens in New Zealand are killed though being shackled and hung up with other birds before being dipped in an electric current water bath to stun them. Their throats are then slit and they are dunked in a boiling vat of water to remove their feathers.

The denial of an animal’s right to life is normalized within our society. Very few people question it as most of us in New Zealand eat meat and other animal products. That means we must kill animals. Mostly, people will accept eating animal-based products as long as good welfare is in place.

And yet, when welfare has been so completely compromised (as in being burnt to death) where is the public outcry? These kinds of things will continue to happen within the context of intensive factory farming of animals.

No animal should suffer so horrendously in the name of breakfast.

The egg industry has an interest in animal welfare spin that normalizes what are essentially horrific practices. That does not , however, mean that the public has to swallow the spin all the way down with their scrambled eggs.

The spin around egg-laying hens is extremely duplicitous. For example, the phasing out of battery cages in New Zealand (effective from 2023) for laying hens and the replacement with colony cages does not equate to good welfare for hens. It does not mean eggs come from cage-free hens. Instead, hens are kept in colony cages which are only fractionally bigger and have many of the same welfare concerns as battery cages.

Specifically, the egg industry spin is that colony cages are ‘enriched’ or ‘furnished’. A colony cage is bare and not remotely furnished. A plastic scratch pad and a tiny perch in a slighter bigger cage does not a happy hen make.

These hens are crammed into cages where they cannot flap their wings , walk around freely or retreat from stressed out and aggressive cage-mates. I have been through a colony cage shed myself and was left traumatised by the evident stress of the thousands upon thousands of birds who live day in and day out in this unnatural and cruel environment.

Hens suffer when kept in cages or barns for the purposes of egg production. Their ‘welfare needs’ are quite simply not met if you measure them against an enriching and purposeful life.

So I am not buying the spin by egg-industry – and neither do I buy or eat eggs as I will not participate in such cruel treatment of fellow animals. There are plenty of alternatives, and thousands of ways to eat with kindness.

I have kept hens who were rescued from the egg industry and been devastated by the state they are in when fresh from the cages. They are in a moult and featherless, almost naked. Their eyes are dull and lifeless and their combs are pale.

Author with rescued hen

Yet immediately they strive to live the life they were meant to have. Their natural and previously repressed behaviours express themselves the moment they are introduced to the earth. They begin scratching and dust bathing. Their eyes slowly become brighter and they begin to shine.

What right do we have to take the life of a sentient being like a hen and confine them in their millions to cages and barns just so we can eat their eggs? How can we render them in a helpless position when a fire engulfs them? How can we macerate them alive at one day of age?

Rescue hens: two hens shortly after being rescued from cages

It’s time the public take animal welfare seriously. If any of the cruelties described in this article appal you then we need to stop consuming eggs.

We have a choice, the animals don’t. Choose compassion.

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