The End of Egg-Laying Hens: Excruciating Thirst

In Japan, there are no regulations regarding animal welfare before and during slaughter. As a result, many animals are not provided with enough water to be comfortable, and after suffering from excruciating thirst, they are slaughtered.
The conditions of hens are especially miserable.

Seven to ten hens are packed into small containers and without access to water, they are transported long distances on trucks. They stay in the containers until they are killed. Some poultry famers stop giving their hens water a half day before departure. As a consequence, those hens suffer for extremely long times.

Most poultry farmers who raise broilers (chickens raised for meat) want to keep time between shipment and slaughter short since such poor conditions affect the quality of chicken meat. Chicken processing factories tend to be located near farms. However, the conditions of unproductive egg-layers (waste chicken) are very different.

Compared to the number of slaughterhouses for broilers, the number of slaughterhouses for egg-laying hens is overwhelmingly small. Thus, the hens are forced to travel in agony for hundreds of miles, sometimes even from the southwest of Japan all way to the northeast of Japan.

– According to Poultry Magazine (Summer, 2014), since there are not many slaughterhouses for ‘waste’ egg layers and ‘waste’ breeding hens, each slaughterhouse takes the hens from a broad area. Many hens spend more than 12 hours in temporary storage areas without food or water.

During an interview, workers at a meat processing factory said that the chickens are sometimes loaded in a truck a day before shipping. The ‘waste’ hens are sold almost for nothing and their meat is used for soup stock and many other products. The low price is the reason why the living conditions of hens are hardly taken into consideration. Minimal consideration is given to the chickens’ welfare so that farmers can squeeze out a profit. During the hot summer, ‘waste’ hens often die during the oppressive transportation conditions.

They exist in a state of suffering until the last moment of their life.
Such inhumane acts must be stopped.