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Wegmans' egg excuses: fact or fiction?

Wegmans makes a lot of creative excuses for the cruelty uncovered at their company egg farm. Too often, however, their claims are misleading—or just plain false.

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Excuse: Wegmans follows industry standards based on science.

Misleading. Industry standards have almost nothing to do with animal welfare. Even the scientists who wrote the standards admit that standard industry practices fail to meet animals' basic needs and cause chronic, life-long pain.1

Indeed, the standards permit a variety of cruel practices, including painful surgical mutilations without anaesthesia, starvation of hens for up to two weeks (to force their bodies into an egg-laying cycle) and intensive, unending confinement.2

Hens at Wegmans Egg Farm are packed into barren wire “battery” cages, where each bird is confined to just 67 square-inches of space for her entire life. That's an area smaller than a sheet of typing paper. The cages are so crowded that the hens cannot walk or even stretch their wings.

Wegmans replies that we “humans don't instinctively know how much space is right for a hen.”9 That may be true, but according to Dr. Joy Mench, Ph.D., a scientist who wrote the industry standards, studies indicate that hens need far more space than Wegmans provides.3

Not surprisingly, the Better Business Bureau ruled in 2004 that Wegmans' claims of animal care were “misleading.”4 In fact, the type of cages used by Wegmans are considered so cruel that in 1999 the European Union decided to ban them!5

Excuse: Wegmans isn't breaking the law.

Misleading. That's because there are no federal laws governing the welfare of egg-laying hens, who are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. And unlike pets, farm animals are typically excluded from consideration under state anti-cruelty laws, too. In fact, any “common” farming practice is often considered legal, no matter how much cruelty is involved.6

By comparison, if Danny Wegman subjected just one pet bird to the same abuses inflicted on the 700,000 hens at his egg farm, he could face fines and jail time.7 David Wolfson, Esq. is an expert on federal and state anti-cruelty statutes at Harvard Law School. He says:

The public must be made aware of the cruelty that occurs as a result of common farming practices and the fact that laws do not regulate how farmed animals are treated by the agricultural industry. People just think that there must be some laws that provide some limitations in relation to the cruel treatment of farmed animals, but this is simply not the case.8

Excuse: Hens need to live in crowded battery cages for their own safety.

False. Wegmans claims that free-range hens have mortality rates of 20-40% a year, compared to Wegmans' own alleged mortality rate of 8%.9 The 20-40% figure sounds impressive, but it's simply wrong, according to the Humane Society of the United States:

Some proponents of battery cages claim that cage-free housing causes unacceptable mortality and food safety problems… In fact, normal mortality rates in free-range flocks are between 5 to 15 percent—less than the mortality rates in many molted, caged flocks. No scientific evidence exists to support the claim that flocks kept in barn aviaries have any higher mortality than flocks kept in cages, after controlling for breed and beak-trimming. Similarly, available data suggest there are no significant differences in food safety between properly managed cage- and cage-free egg production.10

Excuse: Wegmans' practice of “beak trimming” is necessary and painless.

False. “Beak trimming” may sound innocent, but it's actually a gruesome procedure that involves burning off sensitive, nerve-rich tissue. According to Wegmans' own experts, the process causes both acute and chronic pain.1

It's unnecessary. Wegmans claims it mutilates hens in order to prevent them from injuring one another.11 While it's true that hens establish “pecking orders,” their conflicts are typically fleeting and harmless: birds of lower rank simply flee the aggressor. In Wegmans' cramped cages, however, hens can barely move, much less flee. Only in such abnormally confined spaces do normally harmless behaviors like pecking become a problem.

It's painful. Beaks are full of sensory nerves that provide feedback about the world. Birds use their beaks to grasp and manipulate objects, sense texture, and feel pain. As avian expert Ian Duncan, Ph.D. explains:

There is now good morphological, neurophysiological and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads to both acute and chronic pain. The morphological evidence is that the tip of the beak is richly innervated and has nociceptors or pain receptors. This means that cutting and heating the beak will lead to acute pain. In addition, it has been shown that as the nerve fibers in the amputated stump of the beak start to regenerate into the damaged tissue, neuromas form. Neuromas are tiny tangled nerve masses that have been implicated in phantom limb pain (a type of chronic pain) in human beings.12

A diagram from the Handbook of Avian Anatomy shows that the sensory nerves in a hen's face extend nearly to the tip of her beak.13 Compare this with a photo of a mutilated hen at Wegmans Egg Farm: nearly half of her beak has been burned off.

Excuse: The cruelty shown in that video isn't from Wegmans Egg Farm.

False. The producers of the documentary Wegmans Cruelty brought a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver with them to the farm. GPS uses timing signals from military satellites to determine location to an accuracy of two meters.

The filmmakers have made available raw (unedited) video footage from the farm showing both battery cage cruelty as well as the GPS receiver with latitude and longitude of N 43° 15.104'; W 076° 47.493. These coordinates place their video camera in a shed at the north end of Wegmans Egg Farm in Wolcott, New York.

Wegmans' actions speak louder than words. If the footage was faked, they could have sued for libel. Instead, they insisted that the filmmakers be charged with burglary for the crime of transporting dying hens to a veterinarian. Ironically, Wegmans' evidence is the very same video footage they dispute.

In any case, we already know from Wegmans' own documents that the worst practices shown in the film do indeed occur at the farm: hens trapped in pits of liquid manure, beak mutilation, and intensive, life-long confinement.11 14 15

Excuse: Cage-free eggs cost too much.

Prices checked May 7-9, 2006. Elizabeth: Wegmans Woodbridge vs. Trader Joe's Westfield. Baltimore: Wegmans Hunt Valley vs. Trader Joe's Towson. Cherry Hill: Wegmans Mt. Laurel vs. Trader Joe's Marlton.

Region	Wegmans' cage eggs	Trader Joe's cage-free	% more
Fairfax, VA	$0.89	$0.99	11%
Cherry Hill, NJ	$0.99	$0.99	0%
Baltimore, MD	$0.75	$0.99	32%
Elizabeth, NJ	$0.99	$0.99	0%

Misleading. Wegmans is often asked why it still lags behind other large grocery chains that have switched to cage-free eggs. According to Wegmans, that's because cage-free eggs cost over 100% more, and only customers of “specialty stores” like Trader Joe's can afford such luxuries.9

But do cage-free eggs really cost 100% more? Not according to industry experts. A 2004 study found that cage-free production costs only 5%-15% more. Even the most expensive method considered (providing hens with almost 200 times more space than Wegmans battery cages) cost only 70% more.16

So much for production costs. What about cost to the consumer? In 2006 we surveyed prices for a dozen large eggs in four regions where Wegmans competes with Trader Joe's. (All Trader Joe's brand eggs come from cage-free hens.)

In some regions there was no price difference at all. But even in the worst-case comparison, the cost difference was only 32%. That's far less than the 100% claimed by Wegmans: just two cents more per egg!

If an upscale “specialty store” like Trader Joe's can sell cage-free eggs at affordable prices, why can't Wegmans? Is Wegmans really claiming that just two cents more per egg—at most—is too much to pay to reduce the tremendous suffering caused by egg production?

Excuse: Happy hens are good business.

False. Wegmans argues that it doesn't make sense for them to harm the very animals that supply their eggs.9 Happy chickens are more productive, so why mistreat them?

Because suffering can be profitable. Take cage density, for instance. Experts know that intensive crowding causes suffering. As Wegmans-endorsed poultry expert J. A. Mench, Ph.D. writes:

There is a large body of evidence demonstrating that increasing density is associated with increased mortality and decreased hen housed egg production, both indications of reduced welfare…3

Yet Wegmans intentionally makes their hens suffer in overcrowded cages. Why do that if it means less eggs per hen?

The answer is in the numbers. Although crowded hens lay fewer eggs and die more frequently, the drop in per-hen production is outweighed by having more hens. Using figures cited by Mench,17

• 3 hens crammed in a 216² inch cage for a year (72² in./hen) produce 245 eggs each. 3 hens x 245 eggs/hen = 735 eggs.

• 4 hens crammed in a 216² inch cage for a year (54² in./hen) produce 235 eggs each. 4 hens x 235 eggs/hen = 940 eggs.

The hens in the more crowded cage are less productive, but there are more of them. More chickens per cage means more eggs total—and therefore more profit for Wegmans, even though more suffering is involved.

Last modified: 2007-10-03 · © UR-VEG · Send feedback