"Eggregious Lies from Wegmans,"
an excellent, must-read critical analysis from Animal Writings: Essays and Musings on Animals and Society
(post also available with pictures here).

. . Inherent in Wegmans’ denial is "those sorts of practices, shown in the video, don't happen here." But they do happen there, and they know it. Their attempts to lie about the filth and confinement in their facilities, and to accuse the people who shot the videos of framing Wegmans speaks volumes about their ethics and taints everything else they say about their egg farms.

. . Wegmans claims that the activists were "compromising the safety of our hens."Are they talking about the ones with body parts stuck in the cage bars, the ones whose wings are covered in excrement, the ones that walk over decomposing corpses, or this poor creature who would have died in the manure pits had not CC activists rescued her?

. . You would never do this to your bet dog, cat, or bird. Why would you pay someone else to do it to thousands of them? Not cruel? How stupid does Wegmans think you are?

"We have everything to lose and nothing to gain if the birds get sick or die," said Natale. -- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. False. Standard egg industry practice is to accept, even force mortality in birds through crowding and starvation because overall the company's bottom line increases. Natale says the company couldn't even produce enough eggs if its hens weren't healthy.False. The hens are genetically bred to produce a high volume of eggs, and even this number is inflated due to the artificial lighting that stimulates the hens to produce more eggs.

. . Wegmans’ ridiculous denial is insulting to birds and people.

Natale worries that the "emotional content" of the video of their egg operation will "overwhelm the science" of the operations. No, the emotion — expressed as sympathy for living creatures — will overwhelm the cruelty. And potentially overwhelm profit.

Wegmans and other factory farm operations hide behind "science." Every cruelty imaginable has been defended in terms of science. It doesn't take a scientist to know that birds with legs and wings like to use them once in a while. It doesn't take a scientist to know that if you kept your pet chicken in a wire crate that had less area than a laptop computer her whole life, you'd be convicted of animal cruelty and that all your neighbors and friends would know without a doubt that you were cruel. Wegmans brags about such treatment.Wegmans uses emotion, not science, to deceive you and perpetuate cruelty.

. . But you must think people are pretty stupid, too, or you wouldn't feed them one obviously disprovable lie after another."After a thorough investigation by the authorities, we were not charged with animal abuse." -- wegmans.com This demonstrates all that is wrong with animal cruelty laws and their "enforcement." Nearly every abuse that is illegal in a home is legal in a farm.

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