Washington, D.C.—Animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing (COK) is unveiling the results of its latest undercover investigation into the cruel treatment of egg-laying hens—its third such exposé of Maryland egg factory farms in just 18 months.

From August through November 2002, COK investigated Red Bird Egg Farms (RBEF) in Millington, Md., and found unimaginably cruel conditions for the hundreds of thousands of hens at the factory farm. All of the birds live in "battery cages" (long rows of wire cages each holding an average of eight animals) without enough room to freely stretch their wings.

Investigators with COK documented in videos and photographs numerous acts of animal cruelty at RBEF, including:

• Hens immobilized in the wires of their cages without access to food or water.
• Hens living in overcrowded cages with the decomposing corpses of deceased hens.
• Diseased, sick, and injured hens suffering without veterinary care.

On November 20, 2002, COK investigators rescued ten sick and injured hens in dire need of immediate veterinary care, removing them from the factory farm.

As reported in The New York Times, "Members of the group [Compassion Over Killing] court arrest by entering chicken sheds at night and filming the rows of hens crammed 10 to a cage the size of a file-drawer cabinet. They get close-ups of swollen eyes, infected skin and shattered wings entangled in cage wire." ("Advocates for Animals Turn Attention to Chickens," National Page, Wednesday, December 4, 2002.)

Says COK president Miyun Park, "If the abuse egg-laying hens endure was forced upon dogs or cats, it would be illegal. It's time we take a stand against such cruelty and stop buying eggs."

RBEF is not an isolated case—it is the norm in the egg industry. Similar investigations at major egg farms in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey, and Maryland have all uncovered the same conditions.

As concern about the treatment of animals raised for food is brought to the public's attention, the movement against battery cages escalates every day. The European Union has banned the use of this intensive confinement system effective 2007. Yet, in the United States, while several fast-food industry giants have begun addressing animal welfare issues and recently mandated their egg suppliers to give battery hens more space, these reforms still deny the hens enough space to even flap their wings, or the ability to see sunlight or touch earth. Says COK's Miyun Park, "The best way to help hens is simply not to eat eggs."

Compassion Over Killing is a Washington, D.C.-based animal advocacy organization. Working to end animal abuse, COK primarily focuses on cruelty to animals in agriculture and promotes vegetarian eating as a way to build a kinder world for all of us, both human and nonhuman.