Thousands upon thousands of dead, egg laying hens litter the Brady Landfill, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Note the dead pigs in the background. It is unclear where they came from and garnered no mention in media reports.

On April 1, 2021, workers at the Brady Municipal Landfill site in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, discovered a very disturbing scene: tens of thousands of dead, egg-laying hens. Treated like trash, their broken and fragile bodies had been dumped at the site by an area egg farm. However, there appeared to be movement among the mass of contorted bodies - some of the hens were still alive! Shocked, the workers called a local farm sanctuary to inform them of what they saw and in hopes of having these few remaining souls rescued. Sadly, this was not the first time this had happened.

Ethics

News of this atrocity got out and was first reported by CTV News Winnipeg. Interestingly, the focus of the news report was not necessarily about the thousands of dead hens rotting in the open air, it was about the few who survived and were found writhing amongst the carnage. Make no mistake, the fact that still-alive hens were left to die a slow, painful death is a horror unto itself, but no less were the thousands of innocent ‘spent-hens’ who were killed and dumped like garbage simply because they were no longer profitable.

Closeup of a dead hen

A front-end loader shovels the corpses.

Another victim.

Dead hens among the discarded mattresses and household trash.

Feather loss is ubiquitous among battery caged hens.

Note the dead pigs in the background of this sea of spent hens.

Blood oozes from the beak of this girl.

A rescue who didn't make it.

Above is a photo gallery of images taken from the Brady Landfill, April 1, 2021. Photo credit: The Good Place Farm Sanctuary.

A spokesperson from the Winnipeg Humane Society interviewed by CTV News was quoted as saying that these birds, “were among thousands of euthanized hens that were dumped at the landfill”. Euthanized? The definition of euthanasia is as follows: it is the practice of intentionally ending life to relieve pain and suffering. These hens were not euthanized, they were killed (gassed) to ensure profitability for the egg farm. Commercial hens have been genetically manipulated to lay an excessive number of eggs in their abbreviated life span of approximately 18 months. Once they reach the end of their laying cycle, their exhausted bodies can no longer lay the quantity or quality of eggs for the farmer to keep housing and feeding them, and must make way for younger pullets who have reached egg laying maturity. Thus, egg farms will “de-flock” their barns and kill the spent-hens (an industry term) either through on-site killing or sending them to slaughter. The natural life expectancy of a rescued commercial hen can be anywhere from 4-8 years, as can be testified to by many farmed animal sanctuaries, or longer if their bodies do not succumb to the common illnesses afflicting commercial hens such as ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, egg-yolk peritonitis or other diseases. In nature, their wild cousins can live 10-12 years.

*A photo of “Penny”, a spent-hen rescued from the manure pits at an egg farm in British Columbia, Canada. Photo credit: Geoff Regier*

How Did This Happen?

We interviewed Jen from The Good Place Farm Sanctuary (GPFS) to learn details of what happened.

A dump truck carrying thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands, of “spent hens” arrived from an area egg farm. They were dumped at this municipal landfill to ultimately be moved into a pit. Workers, as on previous occasions, saw movement among the dead pile. Six hens on top were still alive. Jen and one of her volunteers arrived at the scene. One of the hens died on site and they managed to rescue five others. They searched the pile hoping to find others. But given the pile was many feet high over a vast area, there were no doubt alive birds near or at the bottom that could not be saved.

Jen and her volunteer were haunted by the possibility that they might miss one. After a period of time, the five they rescued were driven to a local vet. One of the hens, in particular, was in bad shape - they named her “Pearl”. She didn’t make it. The remaining four did and most ended up at several other sanctuaries (see footnote below).

Jen managed to reach out to the provincial vet responsible for farmed animals in Manitoba. Jen learned that a company was contracted by farms throughout the province who would conduct the mass killing of these birds using a mobile CO2 gas chamber. According to sources, this issue of still-alive hens being dumped at landfills had happened multiple times dating back to at least 2020. There was an investigation that year over a similar incident and recommendations were made to improve methods to ensure no hen came out of the chambers alive. Clearly, the issue was never resolved. Sources informed Jen at GPFS that the same thing happened approximately four days later after this particular incident. Landfill workers have said they often dread the days hens come to the facility because they would routinely see the same thing, over and over and over again. (Note: it is our understanding that municipal workers at this landfill have been reprimanded and instructed not to speak to anyone in the future on matters such as this.)

*One of the rescued hens. Source: The Good Place: Farm Rescue & Sanctuary*

Jen also observed that the pile of discarded hens at the Brady Landfill were likely not caged birds, but free-range or free-run. Jen noted that these hens did not have curled feet which comes from living on a wire floor in a cage for up to a year-and-a-half, as most hens do in Canada. The few they rescued didn’t seem skittish or afraid of her and her volunteer and seemed adept to walking on the ground. Caged hens are unfamiliar and unaccustomed to walking on the ground or interacting with people.

*Another one of the rescued hens. Source: The Good Place Farm Rescue & Sanctuary*

The “Manitoba Egg Farmers said it was "devastated" to hear about the five hens found alive”. “Devastated”? Why because the farm and/or the hired company failed to kill the few who survived which made its way to news reports? The Manitoba Egg Farmers, and Canada’s egg industry in general, kills millions upon millions of spent hens every year in addition to an equal number of male chicks who are useless to the egg industry as they don’t lay eggs. The egg industry IS a slaughter industry no different than meat or dairy production.

And herein lies the issue as it relates to the exploitation of egg laying hens: some of us (certainly not the egg industry) are not necessarily shocked or saddened to learn of thousands being killed in a story like this, we are saddened to learn that some were still alive. Think about this for a moment: is our empathy reserved largely for the suffering of those still alive, while ignoring the suffering of all those who were once confined and condemned to lay only to be killed and discarded like trash? Are not all the dead hens in this story entitled to the same moral concern as the ones found alive? Should we not be outraged and sickened by the massive dead pile? Absolutely!

*Manure pits beneath the stacks of battery cages on an egg farm in British Columbia, Canada. Photo credit: Geoff Regier*

Disease

*A live market in New York City. Click on photo to enlarge.*

In the sober new reality of global pandemics, our world needs to take a very hard look at the risk factors of animal agriculture and, in this case, the egg industry. Avian and swine flu, antibiotic resistance, zoonotic diseases such as SARS, MERS, AIDS, Ebola, and now Covid-19 are either caused directly, or indirectly, by intensive animal agriculture, stress imposed on natural ecosystems as a result of human encroachment, the harvesting of wildlife (ie. bush meat), and wet markets.

Yet despite all that we have learned, we still see scenes like the Brady Landfill playing out - thousands upon thousands of corpses from factory farms, rotting in the sun and out in the open? One thing most of us surely know from having been to a landfill or waste facility, there is a lot of wildlife that are attracted to these places: sea gulls, mice, rats, turkey vultures, raccoons, cats, dogs, and those predators preying on those scavenging the garbage. It is absolutely shocking that in a first world country like Canada, in the 21st century, dead farm animals would be dumped at a municipal landfill with the corpses of these animals free to come into contact with wildlife. And let’s not forget the municipal workers who are working at these facilities - what about the risk of exposure to them? All it takes is one pathogen to jump from animal to human. It has happened before and will, in all probability, happen again.

Propaganda

“We take accusations about animal cruelty very seriously”. How many times have you heard a PR person for an industry group say this every time a story emerges like this landfill story? Are they to be believed?

A screen shot from Manitoba Egg Farmers website. “Wholesome, hard-working, Canadian family”. — A screen shot from Manitoba Egg Farmers website depicts, ‘smiling, laughing’ people joyfully engaged in the business of egg production. A business that imposes untold misery and deprivation for the millions upon millions of hens exploited across Canada annually.

This is a standard reply designed to assuage public concern about animal welfare. The egg industry in Canada, and elsewhere, devote considerable sums of money to present an image of a clean, green and caring industry. They focus a lot of their efforts to remind consumers that they are feeding “you and your family” - sounds wholesome doesn’t it? Often they’ll recruit from their 1,200 members across Canada to profile a few of those who run and operate egg farms and portray them as ‘smiling, hard-working Canadians’ . . . . just like you! And if they are just like you they can’t be all bad, right? The focus of these carefully, crafted advertising campaigns are always on the family-run farms and invoke words like “community”, “care” and promote the healthful and nutritious aspects of eggs. Never do they focus on the hens and rarely show you inside an egg barn containing thousands of birds. And if they do, it is always of a barn that has been “de-flocked”, cleaned and re-populated with pullets who have just reached egg laying maturity and look clean, healthy and vibrant. Never will you see images or video of a barn 12-18 months afterwards. Why? Because it is not a pretty sight.

Generally speaking, the egg industry routinely anthropomorphizes animals when it comes to their consumer packaging and advertising campaigns by using cartoon depictions exhibiting human like qualities and facial expressions. This is true for Canada as it is for many countries around the world like the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, etc. This is done in an effort to depict the industry as benign or harmless. Words like “Happy”, “Farm Fresh”, “Organic”, “Local” are ubiquitous.

"Farm fresh eggs" - nothing could as wholesome.

This UK company faced a legal challenge for false advertising.

A chicken promoting someone eating themselves?

The fact is, egg farming is a slaughter industry - it is violent and bloody. Male chicks are shredded alive shortly after hatching, females are often de-beaked, vaccinated against high risk diseases as a result of high stocking densities, endure many illnesses along the way, and then slaughtered after 18 months. Sometimes they are killed on site, dumped in a pit and buried, or incinerated.

Canada’s egg industry does not want you to know any of this because they know the average Canadian would be appalled at this kind of animal cruelty. Nonetheless, it is how commercial hatcheries, egg farmers, and the industry as a whole, can maximize profitability. And let’s be clear, all egg farming associations, whether provincial or federal, exist to promote the financial sustainability and profitability of their members first and foremost. And, part of that mandate, requires them to market and promote what they do in the most sanitized and favourable light possible.

The photo gallery below shows what the Egg Farmers of Canada publishes on their website and accompanying photos of the reality on Canadian egg farms:

Screenshot: Egg Farmers of Canada's website

They assert that farmers inspect their flocks twice a day and take immediate action to remove sick or injured birds.