The Hokey-Pokey Hen

Congress is considering whether to pass a bill that will expand the size of commercial hen housing. H.R. 3798, which amends the Egg Products Inspection Act, would do away with those wire cages, where eight chickens are crammed into a container, unable to scratch their heads or turn around. If Congress passes this bill, layers would have bars on which to roost and boxes in which to nest. The cramped cages in factory farms would be thing of the past. The hens of American will finally work under conditions that allow them to move around.

Animal rights organizations are lobbying for the passage of H.R. 3798 and so are egg producers. When California voters passed Proposition 2 in 2008, egg producers across the land saw the writing on the wall. Prop 2 demanded that layers be able “to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.” Rather than try to comply with an assortment of state regulations, producers want a national standard, one that will make it easier to do business.

With egg producers joining with the Humane Society in support of the bill, what is getting in the way of its passage?

As reported on NPR, the president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is worried that Congress is concerning itself with the emotional life of chickens. “It isn’t a very large leap from egg production to chicken production to beef production," said Bill Donald. If Congress starts demanding mobility for chickens, what’s to say they won’t start demanding mobility for pigs and cows? With all those layers standing up, stretching their claw-tipped toes and turning all around, one could imagine that other farm animals might agree that the hokey-pokey really is what it’s all about. As far as the cattlemen are concerned, we’re on the verge of another great ethical step for mankind (a rights foot forward, if you follow the cardinal rule of hokey-pokey).

At the inception of this country, only white, land-owning males could go where they wanted to go, and do what they wanted to do. That small sphere of mobility was gradually expanded to include the landless, descendants of African slaves, and females. Each time the ethical sphere expanded, new political life infused a segment of the population that had lain fallow. In grammatical terms, objects became subjects; no longer the property of others, these new subjects could move of their own accord.

From this perspective, one can see why meat producers of America are feeling the heat. If the next ethical expansion includes chickens, the entire meat industry will come under scrutiny, or so they fear. With voters concerned about the happiness of their entrees, feedlots would have to be replaced with pastureland. Egg producers believe they can pass on the costs of improvements at about a penny an egg. Meat producers, however, aren’t so reassured. They fear they will have to raise the price of hamburger beyond the purchasing power of a McDonald’s customer.

I suppose the meat producers could take some strange consolation from the fact that ethical expansion has not saved all classes of people from life in cages. The numbers of African-American males packed in some county jails is not unlike the density of California chickens prior to Prop 2. When I visited a jail in North Philadelphia a few summers ago, there were forty men to a cage. The cages and the bunk beds were stacked two high, the temperature hovered around 100 degrees, and upon our entrance the inmates set up a deafening howl. When the men finally quieted down we asked permission to enter their cages. One man told me he had been in this holding cell for nine months, waiting to be arraigned. He had high blood pressure but the warden wouldn’t give him a low-salt diet. “They’re going to kill me before they charge me,” he said. The ethical expansions of the past hundred years had not saved him from the cruelties of the cage.

But mentioning this sordid fact to meat producers won’t necessarily help their case. Once chickens receive protections from Congress, other caged creatures will make similar claims. Indeed, one could imagine a powerful coalition forming between prisoners and farm animals. Let us stand, let us lie down, let us stretch our limbs! We want the same protections, California, that you just gave to hens! (Here in Vermont, where ex-offenders still have the vote, a portion of the voting population might have some useful things to say to policy makers about life in cages.)

My sense is that where goes the chicken, so goes the nation. Once the commercial hen can dance the hokey-pokey, then the game of cruel confinement will be over. The newly emancipated layer will be the standard of freedom, a thorn in the side of architects of cramped spaces. And it’s not just feedlots that will lose their legitimacy: commercial airlines, prisons, and the “man camps” of the North Dakota oil fields may all need to be rethought. After all, we can’t live in a country where hens are happier than people… can we?