In response to the coordinated vegan preaching from MFA, an egg industry spokesperson cut right through the noise with his response:

“There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens. If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need.”

If these vegan activists care so much about animals, they ought to be running an adopt-a-chicken campaign. Since Mercy for Animals wants to stop animal suffering, and they now have the opportunity to do so, will they follow through? We doubt it.

So, according to the CFCC and the industry it services, the problem isn’t that 200 million male chicks are being killed by egg producers because they are of no economic value: the REAL problem is that animal rights activists (who don’t want ANY animals to be bred and raised for food) can’t find homes for all of these birds!

What is astounding about this is that our opponents can make such obviously cruel and outrageous statements and get away with it. You’d think that anyone eating eggs would stop immediately once they learned that not only was the industry killing 200 million baby chicks a year by grinding them up alive, but that they hypocritically blamed their deaths on people who don’t even eat any animal products.

I used to get incensed by the starkly depressing reality we vegans face every day and the appalling effectiveness of corporate propaganda campaigns. But nowadays I just try to maintain a sense of humor about it, because laughing is generally healthier (and more effective) than shouting. You have to admit, the CFCC’s PR peeps certainly are masters of self-parody: what good are professional satirists when the target of ridicule throws pies in its own face?! And yet, sadly, it seems that many meat eaters just don’t get the joke…