Wegmans Cruelty - The Investigation

Main Menu

Front Page

Get the Film

The Investigation

The Investigation

Life in a Battery Cage

In 2004, a team of investigators from Compassionate Consumers visited Wegmans Egg Farm in Wolcott, NY. The facility is the largest of its kind in New York State, housing 750,000 egg-laying hens. Investigators found hens subjected to egregiously inhumane conditions much like those documented at other large-scale egg farms across the United States.

Angie's Story

A hen walks through the manure at Wegmans Egg Farm

In the sheds we entered at Wegman's Egg Farm, there were long manure pits below the rows of battery cages. Hens who manage to escape from the crowded battery cages often fall through into the pits below. Once there, they have no way to access food or water. Of the hens we found there, some had surrendered to a dark end, sinking into the murk and giving up. In such a terrible place, this reaction is hardly a surprise. Some of the hens, though, showed us that they had resolved to survive.

Phoenix's Story

The manure pits were dark and disgusting

Holding onto the wall, I carefully reached one leg down, feeling for a solid place to stand between the piles and puddles of putrid manure. I looked up at my hands; the beetles that covered the wall were beginning to crawl onto them. As I dropped to the floor, sinking into the muck, I looked into the dark abyss of the manure pits stretching out below the battery cages at Wegmans Egg Farm in Wolcott, NY.