Plans for an Enormous Egg Farm Rejected!
Great news: In March 2025, Maidstone Borough Council rejected plans for an enormous egg farm that would have exploited around 192,000 chickens before sending them to slaughter. This wonderful news comes five years after PETA submitted a 15,000-strong petition to the council, opposing the cruel plans. Thank you to everyone who spoke out and signed PETA’s petition; it’s been worth the wait!
Disingenuous “Free-Range” Labels
The developers claim the facility would have adhered to RSPCA “free-range“ standards. However, previous PETA exposés have shown that while such labels might make consumers feel better about purchasing eggs, they don’t prevent chickens from suffering.
Crammed Into Overcrowded Sheds
Chickens are intelligent animals who feel pain and distress. In addition to being self-aware, they form friendships and social hierarchies and can solve problems. If plans for this farm went ahead, the chickens there would have been forced to spend their unnaturally short lives crammed into a barren shed, forced to lay eggs in appalling conditions, day after day, as the intense strain on their bodies likely caused them to suffer from osteoporosis and sustain broken bones. Disease runs rampant in such filthy, cramped sheds, so many birds die, and some are left to rot among the living.
Beaks Severed With Infra-Red Lasers
As a result of these stressful conditions, chickens often peck and fight each other, so farmers usually de-beak chicks with an infra-red laser, which can cause them immense acute and chronic pain. They’ll likely be denied the chance to do anything naturally, such as roaming and foraging, pecking for food, scratching, and building nests for their offspring.
Plunged Into Scalding Hot Water
Chickens naturally live for up to 12 years, but at this facility, their lives would end at just 19 to 20 months. Once hens reach that age, the quality of the eggshells produced deteriorates and laying rates reduce. At this point, they’re collected, sent to the abattoir, and disposed of like rubbish. Such trips are so horrific that over a million chickens die in transit each year. Those who survive the journey will either be gassed or face a throat-cutting machine before being plunged into scalding-hot water.
What’s Next?
Farms are built to feed the nation’s appetite for animals, so the best way to help stop future factory-farm plans is to go vegan.
We’ll continue to speak out against animal farms like this one. To add your name to our future petitions, subscribe to PETA News to be the first to hear about them.
If you hear about plans for a new factory farm in your area, please inform us by contacting [email protected] as soon as possible.
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