Hens in a Cage = Travelers in a Hotel with Room Service?

This past weekend I had the great privilege of speaking at the Their Lives, Our Voices conference in Minneapolis. I also had the even greater privilege of getting to hear some amazing talks. Paul Shapiro, senior director for factory farming issues at the Humane Society of the United States, gave a talk about rebutting animal agriculture claims. Among the quotes Paul shared were two from Trent Loos, a farmer and radio host who is a spokesperson for a PR group that opposes animal welfare reforms in agriculture. This was one:

“A hen in a cage is actually not that much different from a traveler in a hotel with room service.”

Paul is a witty guy and not easily riled, so he just shared with us two slides. The first of hens in battery cages:












And the second, of travelers in a hotel with room service:














He toggled back and forth between the slides to make sure that we could really tell the difference. Hens in a cage. Travelers in a hotel.

I so appreciated Paul’s humor and way in which he shared such a horrific image in a manner that allowed our compassion to be ignited while using our critical thinking skills and laughing all at the same. Many Americans do not want to see the images of hens in battery cages. They do not want to be confronted with the reality that the eggs they eat – unless they raise hens themselves or only purchase eggs from farms where they’ve witnessed the conditions – almost always come from battery cage facilities in which chickens are treated unimaginably cruelly. To know and to see requires that we either change our behaviors and refuse to let our desires eclipse our values, or to live with the internal conflict that we are regularly contributing to egregious suffering that we would never allow to be perpetrated on our pets.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

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