Women Caged Themselves in Solidarity With Hens for International Women’s Day

In honour of International Women’s Day (8 March), women in Goa crammed themselves into cages in solidarity with hens on egg farms. These PETA India supporters aimed to remind passers-by that mother hens raised for their eggs spend their entire lives in cages so small they can’t spread a single wing.

In the egg industry, hens’ bodies are manipulated to produce as many as 300 eggs per year – far more than the 15 per year their wild ancestors would lay in nature. Because of this, they often suffer from osteoporosis, infections, ovarian cancer, and reproductive tumours, and eggs can even become lodged inside them. If treated well, a hen has a life expectancy of about 10 years. On an egg farm, her body is typically worn out after just two years – if she survives that long in the squalid, crowded conditions. When her egg production drops, she’s considered “spent” and is thrown into a truck full of other hens bound for a slaughterhouse or a live-animal market, where her throat is cut while she’s still conscious.

In addition to sparing chickens and other animals immense suffering, people who go vegan dramatically reduce their carbon footprint as well as their risk of major health conditions. There’s no nutritional need for humans to eat animal-derived foods. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organisation of food and nutrition professionals, vegans are at reduced risk of ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity.