Help for the "Happy Hens" At Kreider Farms

harrisburg(at)mybbb.org, info(at)mybbb.org


Dear Ms. Vaghari and the Better Business Bureau:

Please register my complaint against Kreider Farms, a Lancaster County egg production facility with a dairy farm and several restaurants under the same name. Kreider confines 3.5 million hens at five sites, with a daily output of 4 million eggs.

In 2004, cruelty investigators recorded Kreider's errant disregard for animal welfare at three Pennsylvania locations in Columbia, Mt. Joy, and Middletown. Yet Kreider's website asserts: "Kreider Farms has always been a leader in the development of first rate animal husbandry care...
Happy chickens lay lots of top quality eggs..." and "[hens] are most productive when they are happy and well treated."

Consumers are led to believe eggs are derived from "first rate animal husbandry care." In fact, Kreider's egg-laying factories are a fantastic departure from the picturesque family farm.

In undercover footage circulated via television, print and online media, Kreider's hens are exposed as egg-laying machines trapped in deplorable conditions. Although the USDA recommends four hens per every
16-inch battery cage, Kreider packs six to nine birds into wire coops no larger than a filing drawer. Each hen occupies a space half the size of an 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper. From birth to death, Kreider's hens cannot flutter a wing or extend a leg.

Kreider's hens are marked in bald spots from frantic rubbing against wire walls. Row after row of dingy, waste-filled cages contain hens with burns and sores from the excess urine and feces. Enveloped in ammonia fumes, they live alongside dead hens rotting in aisles and cages.

Investigators also documented living hens discarded in 8-foot manure pits. If you haven't done so already, I urge you to view the photographic evidence at: [www.kreidercruelty.com].

Clearly, Kreider Farms is deluding consumers about the treatment of its hens as well as the unsanitary origin of its eggs. Before they reach the grocer's shelves, Kreider eggs may sit in filthy collection trays, amid feces and rodents, for hours.

Domestic fowl possess a complex nervous system, with intelligence comparable to cats, dogs, and primates. In a natural environment they develop social hierarchies, identify one another, nurture their young, build nests, take dust baths, and roost in trees. Professor Joy Mench, Director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the University of California-Davis, and Temple Grandin, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Department of Animal Science, Colorado State University, are among reputable experts who believe hens raised in factory-like settings are condemned to lives of misery and pain.

In a Zogby International Poll, 86% of public responders considered battery cages like those used at Kreider Farms an "unacceptable" system. Please require Kreider Farms to remove fraudulent or deceptive language from its website and all marketing literature.

Sincerely,