McCruelty - I'm Hating It

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation into a McDonald's egg supplier, Sparboe Egg Farms, exposes the fast-food giant's secret ingredient: shocking cruelty to animals.

Hidden-camera footage taken at Sparboe facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado reveals:

Hens crammed into filthy wire cages with less space for each bird than a standard-sized sheet of paper to live her entire miserable life, unable to fully stretch her wings or engage in most other natural behaviors.

Workers burning off the beaks of young chicks without any painkillers and callously throwing them into cages, some missing the cage doors and hitting the floor Workers grabbing hens by their throats and ramming them into battery cages.

Rotted hens, decomposed beyond recognition as birds, left in cages with hens still laying eggs for human consumption.

A worker tormenting a bird by swinging her around in the air while her legs were caught in a grabbing device - violence described as "torture" by another worker.

A worker shoving a bird into the pocket of another employee without any regard for the animal's fear and suffering.

Chicks trapped and mangled in cage wire - others suffering from open wounds and torn beaks

Live chicks thrown into plastic bags to be suffocated.

Common sense tells us that animals should be given at a minimum the freedom to walk, stretch their limbs, turn around and engage in natural behaviors. Yet, this McDonald's supplier deprives hens of even these most basic freedoms. After viewing the undercover footage, Dr. Sara Shields, research scientist, poultry specialist and consultant in animal welfare, condemned battery-cage egg production:

Battery cage operations are inherently cruel. The barren, restrictive environment offers no hope for an acceptable quality of life, and such severely overcrowded confinement would be unthinkable for any other farmed species. World-wide, there is increasing recognition that battery cages are simply not appropriate housing.

In fact, barren battery cages are so cruel that the entire European Union and the states of California and Michigan have banned their use. Additionally, leading food retailers, such as Whole Foods, Hellmann's, Wolfgang Puck and Subway, and hundreds of colleges and universities refuse to use or sell eggs from hens subjected to the inherent abuses of battery cages.

MFA is calling on McDonald's Corporation to end its use of eggs from hens confined in battery cages in the United States, as it has already in the European Union. As Dr. Shields states,

"Animals are designed to move, are biologically prepared for regular movement, and will suffer physical consequences if they are not given the freedom to exercise." 

Sadly, not a single federal law currently provides any protection to birds at the hatchery, on the factory farm, or during slaughter. Further, most states - including those in which this investigation was conducted - have sweeping exemptions for farmed animals, which allow for abuses to run rampant without prosecution.

As the largest egg purchaser in the United States, McDonald's has enormous power in effecting improved standards of care for egg-laying hens. Accordingly, MFA is also asking that McDonald's actively support a recent agreement between the United Egg Producers and The Humane Society of the United States that seeks to establish federal regulations that would provide hens enough space to turn around, as well as environmental enrichments, such as perches and nesting boxes. The agreement is a modest but important first step in establishing minimal standards for care of birds on a federal level. Sadly, Sparboe Egg Farms is aggressively opposing the implementation of even these meager reforms to reduce animal suffering.

While McDonald's has the moral obligation and purchasing power to lessen the cruelty suffered by the millions of hens who are abused and exploited to produce eggs for its restaurants, consumers also hold enormous power of their own in preventing animal abuse by adopting a compassionate diet.

I have not eaten at McDonald's in over 15 years and probably longer because of the quality of the food they prepare. 

I have also stopped eating chicken and eggs, unless I can get guaranteed free range, humane treated, and organic feed, and the ground they roam on must be certified organic, then perhaps I would consider it.  I'm certainly not a vegan by any means.  I just want to make sure that I know where the food comes from, and how it was treated before I put it into my body. 

If you are a chicken eater, then you should bear witness:

Latest News: Target Follows McDonald's Lead, Drops Egg Supplier Sparboe Farms After Shocking Undercover Video

McDonald's and Target dropped one of the nation's largest egg suppliers after an animal rights group released an undercover video of the egg producer's farms in three states.

McDonald's Corp. said Friday it had dropped Sparboe Farms as a supplier after a video by the group Mercy for Animals showed cases of animal cruelty at five facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado. Target Corp. soon followed, saying it would pull eggs from the Litchfield, Minn.-based company off its shelves.

"Having been made aware of the unacceptable conditions in the company's egg laying facilities, effective immediately, Target will discontinue its business relationship with Sparboe Farms," Minneapolis-based Target said in a statement late Friday.

Sparboe produces 300 million eggs a year, in regular, liquid, frozen and dried form, and ships them to restaurants and stores across the country. The company's Vincent, Iowa, plant had billed itself as the sole fresh egg supplier to every McDonald's west of the Mississippi River.

McDonald's officials say Sparboe was a "significant" supplier and that it was unclear when, or if, the company would work with the Golden Arches again. Sparboe's Iowa facility produced 2 million eggs a day, seven days a week.

That changed Friday when images shot by Mercy for Animals showed a worker swinging a bird around by its feet, hens packed into cramped cages, male chicks being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate and workers cutting off the tips of chicks' beaks.

"The behavior on tape is disturbing and completely unacceptable. McDonald's wants to assure our customers that we demand humane treatment of animals by our suppliers," Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president for sustainability, said in a statement.

We’ve all heard the old adage ‘you are what you eat’, but have you ever stopped to think exactly how true that is? Put simply, healthy eating is the key to wellbeing. We all have up to 100 trillion cells in our bodies, each one demanding a constant supply of daily nutrients in order to function optimally. Food affects all of these cells, and by extension, every aspect of our being: mood, energy levels, food cravings, thinking capacity, sex drive, sleeping habits and general health.

If you feed your body junk and convenience foods it’ll simply lay down fat, lower your energy, even your brain power.

Don't you think it's a time for change.

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