Maqi press release: Maqi animal rights activists rescued 15 egg production chickens on Saturday night: ten of them from barn laid sheds and five from battery cages. Opposed to what animal welfarists and animal welfare organisations claim it hardly matters how they are imprisoned: while the ones are perched together in small groups in cages and have to stand on sloped wire floors the others suffer from stress and cannibalism caused by cramped confinement in large groups. Many hens in the barn laid shed are nearly defeathered, too. Two of them were completely defeathered so that they will come through the following days with the help of a warmth lamp only. Independent of the exploitation method, the hens live for approximately one year only in which they lay up to three hundred eggs. Then their "laying productivity" lessens, the hens are physically at the end because of the enormous demands of egg production and imprisonment, and are therefore killed. The male chicks of the "laying breeds" are gassed or blended immediately after hatching for they are "useless" for egg production. "Everybody who is consuming eggs, whether whole ones or processed into cookies, noodles, cakes etc., is responsible for the suffering and murder of the chickens," says Tanja Mueller of Maqi. In addition to such rescues the animal rights initiative Maqi does educational work to inform others about animal rights and the necessity of a vegan life style. The rescued hens now live in Baden and Westfalia with people who did not adopt them to get their eggs but will enable them to live a life with care and the greatest possible liberty until their natural death. Click on any photo for larger version
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