You already know cage eggs are cruel, but you'll never hear the cage egg industry admit it. So what else might they be cagey about? These five facts may ruffle some feathers.
Hens can naturally live up to 10 years, but in this industry they are no longer valued the minute they can't make a profit. So from as young as 18 months, when their egg production slows down, hens are packed into crates and trucked to slaughter.
Over the last 50 years, most egg production has moved from small family farming into factory operations, run by huge companies. Animals are crammed into smaller and smaller spaces, so that fewer staff are needed to keep an eye on the animals. For hens this means a lifetime of misery. For rural towns this means less jobs and profits funnelled into large corporations rather than farming communities.
Male chicks can't produce eggs, so they have no value to the egg industry. On their first day of life at hatcheries, they are dropped into grinders or gassed to death. Sadly, this happens across the whole egg industry.
At every meal, you have the chance to make life-changing choices for hens. By refusing to buy cage eggs you can help free hens from cages. You can even join the growing number of people discovering delicious egg-free alternatives, and know that you'll be saving the lives of hens and chicks at every meal.
Not only is NZ rapper, Trillion, a talented musician, he's a pretty good mind reader I reckon. His song 'Dirty Dozen' gets in the head of a caged chicken and, well, you can probably guess that it's pretty dark. BUT Trillion's track is creating a brighter world for chickens. Have a listen and then I'll tell you about how this song is helping to free chooks from cages:
What did you think? This bit in particular got me in the feels – "I want my life, let me outside, let me live in the light". Seems like such a basic request but millions of birds are denied the simple pleasure of sunlight, spending their whole lives confined to crowded cages :(
Thankfully, it doesn't have to be this way. Over 100,000 battery hens have already been freed from cages by Animals Australia supporters making kind choices this year! (Have you signed the pledge yet? You can do so here.) And Trillion is using his awesome track 'Dirty Dozen' to help make an even bigger difference for hens! Not only by spreading the word about the true cost of cage eggs through his lyrics, but by donating profits from the sale of the song to help animals :) What a good egg! (Geddit? #sorrynotsorry)
Anyone that can rhyme irreverence and benevolence is already going straight to the top of my playlist, but helping animals too? I'm in!Click here to download a copy of the track for yourself and make a donation to Animals Australia's campaign to make battery cages history!
I’ve decided I’m going to share something with you. It’s not something that I let many people in on. It’s my tofu scramble recipe. Now I’m normally the kind of cook who burns stuff to the bottom of the pan, sets off the fire alarm and then orders in takeaway. But my tofu scramble is world-renowned (amongst the handful of people I’ve cooked it for.)
So what’s the occasion? Well, tomorrow is World Egg Day. The thing about the egg industry is that it kills about 12 million male chicks on their first day of life, simply because they can’t produce eggs and are therefore considered waste.
That’s not something I’m keen to celebrate. But there is something that’s worth making a fuss about. And that is that egg-free food is easy, delicious and lifesaving! Which brings me back to my tofu scramble recipe. Because one of my favourite ways to not eat eggs is in a scramble! Give this a go on the weekend and have a little Egg-Free Day party of your own :)
Scrambled Tofu
Tofu. (I find a medium tofu is best for this but soft works too. Probably about 200-250g per person.)
1 onion, diced
Vegetable oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon turmeric
Soy sauce
1 avo
1 tomato
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Grumpy princess cat mug (pictured right) is optional, but recommended.
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Dice up the avo and tomato. Put it in a bowl and dress with a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper. Put aside.
Stir fry onion with veg oil until a little brown. Crumble up the tofu into the frypan and stirfry until it starts to get a little brown and crispy. (Try it out with a handful of dairy-free cheese, like Vegusto or Cheezly, grated in for an extra especially delicious treat.)
Add minced garlic, turmeric and a splash of soy sauce.
Serve on toast with the avo/tomato combo on top.
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This is my classic fave version but there’s so many ways you can serve it up. Try mixing in sundried tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach instead of doing the avo/tomato thing. Serve that one on some toast with hummus. Yum. Now I’m hungry.
If you ask me, Friday's are pretty sweet... after all, it's almost the weekend. But this week we've got a plan to make Friday even sweeter.
This Friday (14th October) is World Egg Day... I know, I know... you're thinking "What could be sweet about a day celebrating an industry that locks 11 million hens in cages with less space per bird than an A4 sheet of paper, that kills hens who aren't producing enough eggs (usually at around 18months of age) and that kills about 12 million male chicks on their first day of life - simply because they weren't born female, and so can't produce eggs?" ... like this:
... but hold up a sec, and I'll tell you what we have in mind.
This Friday, we'd like to invite you to join us in protesting the egg industry's cruelty to chickens in just about the tastiest way we know how... by baking a delicious egg-free cake!
And by sharing your cruelty-free cake with friends (I know it's hard :P), you can show them just how sweet making a difference for chickens can be!
So, what are you going to bake this Friday for World Egg-Free Day?
P.S. You can also spread the word about World Egg-Free Day by making the image below your facebook profile pic in the lead up to Friday. (Right click on the image to download and save the file ('save image as'), upload it to Facebook and make it your new profile pic. Then tag all your friends, to grab their attention!)
Disclaimer:
We’re supposed to let you know that the ideas expressed here are the views of the individual authors, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Animals Australia or Animals Australia Unleashed. So now you know.