BATTERY EGGS RESOLUTION

1
BATTERY EGGS RESOLUTION
2
History of Egg Farming

• Between 1955 and 1975 flock size in a typical egg
  factory rose from 20,000 to 80,000 birds per
  house as producers learned to stuff and stack the
  cages.
• The automation of feeding, collecting, and
  removing wastes forced thousands of family egg
  farms out of business.
• In 1967, 44 of commercial layers were caged by
  1978, 90 were caged. Today, 98 of all egg
  production comes from caged birds in automated
  factory buildings.

3
RECOGNIZING that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
shall be the first American university student
association to take a stand against battery cages
and factory egg farming, allowing the University
to stand out as an institution that recognizes
progressive decisions regarding our purchasing
power
4
RECOGNIZING that ones decision to buy factory
farmed battery eggs bears significant negative
consequences for oneself, other humans, the
environment and farmed animals
5
WHEREAS, factory egg farms routinely exploit
their workers these workers are primarily
immigrants in Connecticut, Kofkoff Egg Farms,
which controls 90 percent of the states egg
market, was ordered by a court to pay 34
employees over 80,000 in back wages last year
Kofkoff opposed a labor law that would have given
agricultural workers more bargaining rights, as
well as set up a seven-member committee to hear
about labor disputes in the agricultural
industry KofKoff asserted such a law would make
them less competitive in the market
6
furthermore, Maine's DeCoster / Quality Egg of
New England, the second largest egg farm in New
England has paid 2,224,625 in fines for numerous
worker health and safety violations, as well as
wage and hour violations
7
WHEREAS, factory egg farm workers are
additionally exposed to many work-related
hazards according to an article in the American
Journal of Industrial Medicine, Industrial
hygiene surveys in the chicken processing
industry have demonstrated that poultry
confinement workers are exposed to high
concentrations of respiratory toxicants
excretory ammonia fumes from the nitrogen in
decomposing droppings damages the systems of both
humans and birds workers at the slaughterhouses
where spent hens are taken frequently develop
repetitive strain injuries
8
WHEREAS, factory egg farming has a detrimental
effect on the environment the production of
meat, dairy products, and eggs accounts for
one-third of the total amount of raw materials
used for all purposes in the United States the
large amount of solid waste produced by factory
farms is harmful to local ecosystems, as is the
release of ammonia gas animal agriculture is the
greatest producer of sewage wastes in the United
States
9
Connecticut Factory Egg Farm Manure Pit
10
additionally, according to a poultry researcher,
"The amount of animal wastes produced in the U.S.
is staggeringA one million hen complex, for
example, produces 125 tons of wet manure a day
factory egg farming is a waste of agricultural
resources, as only 23 percent of feed protein is
converted to animal protein in eggs according to
Earthsave International it takes 63 gallons of
water to produce one egg factory egg farming
pollutes local waterways with waste spills and
ammonia run-off
11
WHEREAS, battery eggs expose consumers to greater
levels of Salmonella experiments have shown that
forced-molting significantly depressed the
cellular immune responses of the hens and
increased the severity of a concurrent intestinal
Salmonella enteritidis infection every year
more than 650,000 Americans are sickened from
eating Salmonella-tainted eggs, 600 of them die
Salmonella poisoning has especially been a
problem in New England according to the Center
for Disease Control
12
WHEREAS, antibiotics are given to battery hens to
control the bacterial diseases that thrive in
crowded confinement, and to manipulate egg
production in the United States nearly 100
percent of laying hens are given antibiotics
according to Newsweek for sheer
over-prescription, no doctor can touch the
American Farmer. Farm animals receive 30 times
more antibiotics than people do according to
the Union of Concerned Scientists, as much as 70
percent of all antibiotics produced in the United
States are fed to healthy livestock for growth
promotion
13
WHEREAS, not only does overuse reduce
antibiotics effectiveness in animals, it also
poses a real danger to humans according to a New
York Times article, Cipro is in danger of
becoming a casualty of what might be called the
post-antibiotic age Bayer, the maker of Cipro,
also sells a chemically similar drug called
Baytril, which is used in large-scale poultry
production worldwide the widespread use of
Baytril in chickens has already been shown to
decrease Cipro's effectiveness in humans for some
types of infections
14
WHEREAS, the overuse of antibiotics in animal
agriculture has also caused the evolution of
super-Salmonella and other toxic bacteria that
resist antibiotic treatment in chickens, humans
and other animals according to Newsweek,
resistant strains emerge in chickens just as
they do in humans taking antibiotics
15
WHEREAS, Avian influenza has killed multiple
people in Hong Kong and Europe as recently as
April 19, 2003 this is a different strain of the
same disease that 4.7 million hens in Connecticut
are currently under quarantine for The World
Health Organisation said it was conceivable that
avian influenza could turn into a human
epidemic, just as an animal disease is believed
to be the possible origin of the deadly Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) sweeping the
globe (source aol.com)
16
WHEREAS, the American egg industry is
increasingly being controlled by large
agribusiness corporations which tend to drive
smaller sustainable farms out of business
because of the demands of expensive equipment,
only large companies can afford to enter the
business and to expand production, and when they
do, smaller operators are gradually squeezed out
between 1979 and 1988, nearly three-fourths of
Americas independent egg farmers were forced out
of business at the same time, the number of the
very largest operators doubled, and these trends
have continued to today
17
(No Transcript)
18
WHEREAS, the growth of big agribusiness is
relevant in Connecticut, where KofKoff Egg Farm
now controls 90 percent of the states egg market
while small commercial farms have, according to
the president of the Connecticut Poultry Board,
gone out of business the egg industry is among
the top agriculture businesses in Connecticut,
with annual receipts of between 60 million and
100 million
19
WHEREAS, the American government has been
complicit in encouraging the growth of
agribusiness and the destruction of the
independent family farm government tax policy
has subsidized the factory approach to animal
farming in many states portable confinement
units are not considered buildings and/or real
estate and are not subject to real property
taxes such practices have mechanized the
industry rather than employing human labor in
production

• this results in
• The loss of jobs and the creation of
  monopolistic food corporations, practices both
  subsidized by taxpayers money.

20
WHEREAS, agribusiness corporations and national
promotional firms such as the American Egg Board
deceive consumers with the goal of limiting their
ability to make educated consumer choices for
example, commercial poultry operations use feed
additives containing xanthophylls, zeaxanthis,
marigold petals and related extracts, and
carotenic acid to enhance the yellow color of
diluted factory egg yolks
measures are taken solely in an attempt to
deceive consumers When manufactures of
vaccines need high-quality eggs, they dont buy
them from factory farms but from Amish farms with
smaller flocks and manual labor methods
Source Animal Factories
21
(No Transcript)
22
WHEREAS, battery hens live in highly-automated,
windowless sheds containing up to 100,000 hens
each they are cramped in long rows of stacked
"battery cages" up to 10 hens may inhabit an
area of 2.33 ft sq they have a wingspan of 30-32
inches battery cages have wire mesh floors
sometimes a hens feet grow around the bars,
rendering her immobile and unable to feed
battery cages have wire walls in which hens often
get their heads stuck, leading to a slow death by
starvation according to Dr. Lesley J. Rogers, in
The Development of Brain and Behavior in the
Chicken, In no way can these living conditions
meet the demands of a complex nervous system
designed to form a multitude of memories and make
complex decisions
23
WHEREAS, all male laying chicks are killed,
usually by suffocation, as they are of no use to
the egg industry battery hens are housed in
flocks up to 1,000 times their natural size,
battery hens are unable to establish a social
hierarchy normal to free flocks they are
deprived of the basic natural behaviors of
perching, dust-bathing, and nesting quietly they
thus become aggressive and attack other hens
24
WHEREAS, battery hens suffer from feather-loss,
blisters, tumors, foot and leg deformities,
osteoporosis, Fatty Liver Syndrome, Swollen Head
Syndrome, heat stress, mash, mold toxins, mouth
ulcers and many other diseases battery hens have
no access to veterinary care
25
Connecticut battery hen with raw abrasion
26
WHEREAS, battery hens have up to two-thirds of
their beaks sheared off a poultry researcher at
the University of Guelph in Ontario explained,
there is now good morphological, neurological,
and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads
to both acute and chronic pain sometimes the
irregular growth of beaks on de-beaked birds
makes it difficult or impossible to drink
27
WHEREAS, battery hens are force-molted, starved
for 5-18 days to shock their bodies into another
laying cycle, a practice banned in Great Britain
since 1987
28
WHEREAS, life is so strenuous in the cages that
25 percent of the hens die or are culled during
an average eighteen-month laying cycle under
natural conditions chickens can live as long as
fifteen to twenty years in the modern egg
factory, however, hens last only about a year and
a half
29
WHEREAS, those hens who do not die in the battery
shed are sent to slaughter when they are deemed
spent both transport and slaughter of laying
hens is unregulated by the USDA hens suffer
during transport through extreme weather
conditions hens are not electrically stunned
prior to slaughtering as Dr. Karen Davis
explains, It is claimed that electrical stunning
would incur a financial cost through carcass
damage and rejection because of easily fractured
bones. Others have pointed out that while it is
true that electrical stunning of hens causes
broken bones (on average two per bird), during
the remainder of the processing they acquire an
additional four broken bones per bird reflecting
rough handling, inhumane housing, and the
processing technology itself
30
WHEREAS, the study Effect of Density on Caged
Layers, from New York Food and Life Sciences,
showed that a higher degree of crowding in cages,
even though it pushed up mortality, produced
better profits if the price of eggs was above a
given point according to industry magazine,
Feedstuff, At higher egg process, crowding
always results in greater profits the studies
above illustrate, individual animals well-being
and individual productivity can suffer as long as
more eggs can be produced by a factory farm
31
Confinement Video (Windows Media)
32
ACKNOWLEDGING the efforts of other countries in
recognizing the welfare of hens and voting to
phase out battery cages and accompanying
practices that the European Union has passed
laws declaring that no new battery cages may be
installed after 2003 and that by 2013, all hens
must have at least 750 sq. cm of floor space, a
perch, a nest and litter provided that many EU
nations have even gone above and beyond the law
by setting even stricter standards Germany has
stepped up its national deadline to 2007, while
all of Switzerlands laying hens have been
provided with nests and perches under law since
1992 that the United States has no federal
welfare laws regulating and enforcing the care
and treatment of laying hens
33
ACKNOWLEDGING the efforts of corporations such as
McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendys in
recognizing the welfare of hens and the lack of
national welfare laws by adopting their own
guidelines which include banning force-molting
and restricting debeaking that the McDonald's
Corporation announced on 22 August 2000 that the
producers that supply the company with 1.5
billion eggs each year will have to provide 50
percent more space for each caged hen, and will
be prohibited from using the practice of
force-molting, and restricted in the practice of
debeaking
34
furthermore, Burger King has agreed to all the
same standards as McDonalds, and in addition has
given 3 square inches more to laying hens and has
required that the birds be able to stand fully
upright that Burger King has also agreed to
petition the USDA to enforce the Humane Slaughter
Act, to begin implementing its standards in
Canada and to adopt them internationally, and to
issue an annual report detailing progress on
farmed animal welfare
issues that Wendys
has adopted similar welfare
regulations for its egg suppliers
35
ACKNOWLEDGING the Wesleyan Student Assemblys
continued concern for the environment by
supporting resolution on Fair Trade Coffee and
most recently supporting a resolution for
allocating 60,000 for Green Energy on campus

• Fair Trade Coffee endorses economic justice and
  environmental vitality by buying coffee at a fair
  wage to the growers, Wesleyan University Dining
  Services decision to provide Fair Trade and
  organic coffee demonstrates a commitment to these
  values, according to an excerpt from the WSA
  resolution.
• Aramark recently switched from Java City to Green
  Mountain Coffee, which supplies a variety of Fair
  Trade and organic blends.

36
ACKNOWLEDGING the Wesleyan Student Assemblys
concern for workers rights by supporting the
Justice for Janitors campaign, by supporting
Wesleyans joining of the Workers Rights
Consortium, which will phase out clothing
produced by sweatshop labor from Atticus, and by
supporting Fair Trade Coffee on campus
37
WHEREAS, given these precedents, Wesleyan
students support socially responsible purchasing
habits, and the institutional decision not to
support battery cages is an extension of this
belief

• Over 750 Wesleyan students have signed a
  petition stating their insistence that Weshop
  stock only certified organic, free-range eggs.

38
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
supports the replacement of all eggs produced
from hens confined in cages from Weshop
39
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
supports the replacement of all eggs produced
from hens that were debeaked or force-molted from
Weshop
40
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
supports the exclusive sale of certified organic,
free-range eggs in Weshop
41
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student
Assembly supports the replacement of products
containing eggs wherever eggs are not essential
ingredients, such as replacing egg noodles
with non-egg noodles or using egg replacers in
baked goods until Aramark is able to utilize
free-range eggs
42
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
recognizes animal well-being as a legitimate
factor in decision-making at an institutional
level.
43
BE IT RESOLVED that the Wesleyan Student Assembly
encourages increased cooperation with small,
local, certified organic, free-range farmers in
an effort to provide students with the most
sustainable products and to help support local
farmers.
44
   WHITE GATE FARM 83 Upper Pattagansett Road/PO
Box 250 / East Lyme, CT 06333    As a
small-scale, organic, free-range egg farmer, I
applaud the goal of banning factory farmed eggs
from Wesleyan's market. The methods commonly used
by large egg producers cause great suffering to
chickens. Those who purchase the eggs are
unwittingly complicit in causing that
suffering.   These growers dominate the market
through the vast scale in which they operate,
with huge concentrations of birds in small areas
managed by poorly paid workers. Farmers who aim
for healthy chickens, nutritious eggs, and fairly
paid workers -- as well as a modest profit -- are
unable to compete.   I urge you to help level the
playing field for your own market by refusing to
sell factory-farmed eggs.   Pauline Lord White
Gate Farm
45
Current Egg Pricing and EggOption Information
from Weshop
46
EONs Proposal

• Organic free-range eggs from Organic Valley, the
  current brand sold at Weshop, will cost students
  3.00 to 3.50/dozen.
• or
• Organic free-range eggs from EggInnovations will
  cost students 3.00 to 4.00/dozen
• and
• Organic free-range eggs from local farmer will
  cost students 3.00 to 3.50/dozen.

Sources phone contact with sales representative
from Organic Valley and poultry scientist at
EggInnovations, as well as local organic farmer
Pauline Lord from East Lyme, CT.
47
Egg Sale Information from Weshop
Week of April 7-13
Before Campaign

• 124 dozen battery eggs
• 80 dozen free-running eggs
• 42 half dozen organic free-range

• 55
• 36
• 9

• 95
• N/A
• 5

Total of 225 dozen eggs sold total
Source Email from Weshop Director Joe LaChance
dated April 21, 2003