Your post is beautifully written, and I think you’re right about moderation making very large changes over time. Temple Grandin’s latest book seems to make that point forcefully.

I will be in touch to grab a cup of coffee.
Martha

The best way to prevent this: buy unsexed chicks and eat the roosters. Or breed your own chickens. There are several NYC backyard chicken keepers that do this. Rooster meat can be a little tough sometimes, but I find it delicious.

Unlike Matt, I don’t think you would lose your market. Animal rights is an extreme position. Most of your customers would be happy to buy rooster meat.

I am sorry you felt attacked during the Q&A session of the Fowl Play screening. I believe that you are a kind person. As I said several times during the discussion, my goal, the goal of Mercy For Animals, and the point of the film, is to give people honest and accurate information so they can make informed choices.

I believe that most people are compassionate and do not want to support needless cruelty to animals. Horrified by the shocking cruelties involved in industrial egg production, compassionate consumers naturally turn to alternative egg producers who market their products as free-range, cage-free, humane etc. From my experience, these marketing claims are inaccurate (and in many cases dishonest), and I believe the public has a right to know that.

When people purchase eggs from backyard chicken farmers who show pictures of healthy, happy hens with plenty of space (admittedly a much better situation for the hens than a battery cage), they have a right to know what happens to the male chicks at the hatchery. For every egg-laying hen, a male chick is either ground up alive in a giant macerator or thrown into a dumpster and allowed to suffocate (being sent to a slaughterhouse is not a humane alternative to either of these practices and is not standard practice). The more the demand for egg-laying hens, the more male chicks will meet this fate.

I believe people also have a right to know that many backyard hens are shipped through the mail from a hatchery to people’s homes or to Ag stores as if they are mere postcards. Sadly, many of the hens die from dehydration and/or rough handling during shipping. Visit any farm animal sanctuary and you will meet some of the survivors of this cruel process.

While I agree that your hens have a much better life than hens on factory farms, and I can understand why people would be interested in giving you their business over an industrial egg producer, I believe that consumers have a right to know ALL of the facts – including the inconvenient truths we discussed at the screening of Fowl Play.

And while discussing these facts understandably made you feel uncomfortable, my concern remains with the chickens who suffer and die because these facts are kept hidden from the public. While you were given a microphone and an audience to voice your views, the chickens have no voice. My goal is to give the chickens a voice and I strive to do so with the utmost honesty and integrity – even if that means ruffling the feathers of a few chicken farmers in the process.

I suspect that you are a very compassionate person and that your attempts to offer a humane alternative to industrial egg production are pure and honest. I also believe that your customers and many of your colleagues are also making an honest attempt to remove their support from factory farms. I believe we are very much on the same side in the fight against cruelty to animals and I would value the opportunity to learn more about your views and goals. Again, I believe that knowledge is the key to building a better world.

Please feel free to contact me at MattR@MercyForAnimals.org. I would be happy to buy you lunch or coffee or tea so that we might be able to reach a more congenial and civil understanding.

Warm regards,

Matt Rice

I spent years as a vegan, for a multitude of reasons and I am still a strict vegetarian, but I decided ultimately that it was more healthy and more ethical to eat proteins from well-cared-for animals (eggs, milk, cheese) than to participate exclusively in the mass production & carbon footprint of highly-processed vegan food. I know that vegans likely didn’t read it, but Barbara Kingsolver makes the point in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that even tofu costs animal lives (insects murdered by machine harvest, for example).

Anyway, I am sorry you had an upsetting experience. I wish more people saw that there are many paths to a better world and we’re all developing our own.