Little Rhody Egg Farm
RIVA has launched a campaign to raise awareness about the plight of hens in Rhode Island and beyond. Did you know that in the tranquil town of Foster, RI, is a place where no hen would want to live. The public is so disconnected from the orgins of their food and doesn't consider what goes into the neatly packaged, inexpensive egg carton at the market. We urge people to educate themselves, others, and make food choices that are less violent and don't support the enslavement of animals and animal cruelty. Please read about the farm below and our rescue efforts. We invite you to visit our
Photo Gallery for more photos.
News Release
For Immediate Release: March 30, 2009
Providence, RI. – Rhode Island Vegan Awareness (RIVA) challenges conscientious consumers to reconsider what they regard as local, fresh, and humane. What may come as a surprise to many is that while Little Rhody Egg Farms relies on its image as a small family farm, it is actually a microcosm of the larger, industrial operations that have replaced local farms nationwide. Its windowless battery cage operation in Foster, Rhode Island warehouses just under 40,000 Bovan Brown egg-laying hens.
Little Rhody hens are confined to sixty-eight square inches of space, an area slightly smaller than a sheet of notebook paper. This severe confinement doesn’t even accommodate the hens’ basic physical need to spread their wings and move freely. Female chicks are purchased from commercial hatcheries, where male chicks are typically discarded in dumpsters as refuse, electrocuted, or ground up alive in industrial garbage disposals and processed as chicken feed. When the hens are young chicks, a portion of their sensitive beak is cut off without anesthesia to prevent them from harming each other under the intense psychological and physical stress of intensive confinement. Periodically, the entire flock is deprived of food for a period of days sufficient to achieve 15-20% reduction of their body fat. This inhumane practice, called forced-molting, artificially boosts a hen’s egg production and prolongs her egg-laying life by about six months, or until her production drops again, and she is ultimately killed.
Through the mechanized practices of Little Rhody, the hens are victims of unnecessary suffering. Many of Little Rhody’s ‘spent’ hens are shipped to Antonelli Poultry Inc., a live market on Federal Hill, where hundreds of birds are stacked cage upon cage in squalor, to witness the killing of their cage mates and await their own similar fates.
Many consumers are unaware that our society fails to extend even minimal legal protections, such as inclusion under the provisions of the Federal Humane Slaughter Act, to farmed birds. In order to avoid complicity in such widespread and unnecessary animal cruelty, RIVA urges consumers to rethink their food choices and adopt a vegan diet. Free guides and information, are available through our website at www.veganawareness.org.
-End-
___________________________________________________________________________
News Release
From Hell to Heaven; Chicken Run Provides Needed Sanctuary
For Immediate Release:
March 30, 2009
Providence, RI. – At the tender age of 22 months, without ever having spread their wings or basked in the sunlight, 15 chickens were rescued by Rhode Island Vegan Awareness from lives of suffering and intensive confinement. Just a drop in the bucket of the approximately 40,000 hens still languishing in battery cages at Little Rhody Egg Farm in Foster, Rhode Island. These lucky fifteen hens will spend the remainder of their natural lives at the United Poultry Concerns animal sanctuary in Machipongo, West Virginia.
On March 25, hundreds of Little Rhody hens arrived in the winter cold on an open truck at Antonelli Poultry, a live market on Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island. Volunteers for Rhode Island Vegan Awareness purchased their freedom in an effort to raise public awareness about the plight of hens abused in agribusiness. RIVA hopes that rest and tender loving care will heal these birds of their physical and psychological trauma. All of the birds have severe feather loss and some are recovering from dehydration and broken bones.
RIVA’s Co-Founder and President, Elana Kirshenbaum, says, “The last thing RIVA wishes to do is support a business that is predicated on the unnecessary suffering and killing of any species. The hens are innocent victims of a widespread abusive system that legally regards them as property. All hens deserve to be spared the unacceptable deprivation and slaughter that is their tragic fate.”
RIVA volunteer, Christa Albrecht-Vegas, adds,,“It’s not just happening in large agricultural states like California and New Jersey. In turning our backs on the unpleasant truths occurring in our own backyard, Rhode Islanders are complicit in a system of abuse and exploitation.”
RIVA urges consumers to rethink their food choices and adopt a vegan diet. Free guides and information, as well as photos, are available through our website at www.veganawareness.org.
-End-
