A devastating look at chicken egg and “meat” production.

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review from the publisher.)

Last fall - and along with The Simple Little Vegan Dog Book - the Book Publishing Company offered me a copy of Karen Davis's Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs for review. (Originally published in 1996, the book was revised in 2009; you can download a pdf copy of the original book here.) Though I read through the book rather quickly, it's taken me much longer to write a review, with several aborted attempts under my belt.

This isn't to suggest that I disliked the book and have had trouble writing a polite critique. Quite the opposite, actually: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is brimming with so much important information that I've found it difficult, if not impossible, to boil it down to the essentials as I'd initially intended. Whether you're a veteran animal advocate or a newbie vegetarian considering the merits of veganism (they are many, dear grasshopper!), Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is a must read.

As the founder and director of United Poultry Concerns, Karen Davis has devoted the past twenty+ years of her life to rescuing, rehabilitating and advocating on behalf of farmed animals - particularly "poultry" animals such as chickens and turkeys. She's written a number of books that speak to the suffering of these magnificent animals; in addition to Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, there's More than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality (2001; pdf available here) and The Holocaust & the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005). She's also contributed to at least one anthology that addresses the intersection of feminism and animal rights, and many of her essays appear on UPC's website.

In the United States, nearly 10 billion chickens are slaughtered every year; worldwide, the number is 40 billion and growing, as agribiz continues to export America's extremely unhealthy, meat-laden diet - as well as its industrialized method of animal "farming" - to developing nations. At any given time, 5 billion hens "live" in battery cages on American "farms," so that their bodies may be exploited for eggs. Because male chicks are an unwanted byproduct of this system, 250 million of them are discarded - suffocated, gassed, ground up or merely thrown out, alive - annually.

While chickens - hens, roosters and chicks; mothers, fathers and children - represent the single most exploited species of farmed animals, they receive perhaps the least consideration. More chickens are enslaved and slaughtered per year than cows, pigs, sheeps and goats combined - and yet, along with cold-blooded mammals such as reptiles, chickens and other birds are not even considered "animals" under the U.S. Animal Welfare Act. (Granted, animals farmed for food and fiber are also not covered under the AWA, but this is perhaps small consolation, as they still fall under the rubric of "animals.") Perhaps it's their "alien" faces, what with rigid beaks where expressive mouths "should" be, but humans seem to have more trouble empathizing with chickens and birds than other farmed animal species, such as pigs and cows (who, of course, receive less consideration than "pet" species, such as dogs and cats).

Prior to the publication of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs in 1996, Davis reports that birds farmed for their meat and eggs were commonly absent from animal welfare and rights campaigns. While our treatment of birds certainly has not improved in the past decade and a half, I do think that our understanding of their emotions, intelligence, sentience and family lives has grown in leaps and bounds - in part due to the work of folks like Karen Davis. The concerns of "poultry" animals are now firmly entrenched in farmed animal advocacy - one need look no further than the many "adopt-a-turkey" campaigns that crop up this time of year - as they should be. (Next up: a similar push for the rights of fishes and other creatures deemed "seafood.")

In Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, Davis examines the many ways in which birds raised for their flesh and eggs are exploited by humans. Much of the text focuses on the lives and deaths "broiler" chickens and "battery" hens, but Davis covers other forms of abuse as well, including "local," "organic" and "free range" operations, school hatching projects, live transport, and industry research and vivisection. She relies on a variety of resources to tell her story - the chickens' stories - most notably industry publications, through which the audience can listen to the architects of these atrocities in their own words. (While much of the books focuses on animal agriculture in the United States, Davis also addresses international concerns and policies, albeit somewhat briefly.)

All of this she places in historical context by briefly tracing the "farming" of birds to its roots. What has changed in the past half century is not the quality of the treatment we've afforded our avian kin - collectively, humans' interactions with birds have always been marked by brutality - but rather its scope. With the advent of technology, we've devised newer and more sadistic ways of farming animals, and on an increasingly larger scale. The effects of these scientific "advances" on chickens as described by Davis will horrify you; and the future avenues of "research" proposed by animal ag. scientists are more shocking and sadistic still.

Throughout the text, Davis also "humanizes" the subjects of these cruelties, reminding her audience that these are sentient beings, with wills, personalities, and families of their own. She begins Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs with a chapter-long discussion of chickens' inner lives, familial structures, social ties, and capacity to feel emotions such as love and grief - and, of course, suffering. (The section on the formation of the egg and embryo within is beautiful, simply beautiful. You'll never look at an egg - or a mother hen - the same way again.) In this and subsequent chapters, she weaves personal - if imagined - "first chicken" narratives into the conversation, thus making the story about them, not us.

Davis's knowledge is vast; and her writing, lyrical and heart-wrenching. I don't care who you are or what your background in animal activism; you will learn something - many things - from Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, and you will be moved to tears, probably on multiple occasions. It's difficult to compare the suffering endured by various nonhuman animals - all suffering is horrible, is it not? - but that of birds raised for eggs and meat is particularly gruesome; much of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs reads like something out of the Dante's Inferno - or a particularly dystopian Margaret Atwood novel.

Only…infinitely worse, because it’s real. It’s happening. Right this very moment, hundreds of millions of “laying” hens remain trapped in their own filth: eyes burning, stomachs empty and cramping, feet aching, skeletons collapsing, hearts and minds crying out for relief, freedom – and their disappeared babies. These are our sisters, suffering; alone and not. For no reason other than that the products of their reproductive systems taste yummy to human palates.

Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is an exquisitely difficult story to read. And yet, read we must. Davis gives voice to the billions of forsaken chickens that we Americans enslave, exploit, kill and dismember every year. (Even if you do not work in a slaughterhouse or own stock in Tyson, if you consume chickens or their eggs, then yes, you are directly complicit in the unimaginable suffering described by Davis.) She puts the chicks, roosters and – especially – hens front and center, daring the reader to live their shared experiences, if only vicariously.

Should you ever find yourself face-to-face with a rescued “battery” hen, dear reader, tell me this: will you be able to return her gaze without flinching?

See also: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs (Karen Davis, 2009): A vegan feminist book review, with recipes! on V for Vegan. ( )

An important book that will change the way you look at chickens and their eggs forever. Now, being well informed on the subject, it is only organic cage-free poultry and eggs for me! ( )