Letter from Kelly Slade

HOP, Hollywood's latest animated movie, is at cinemas nationwide. The movie features lots of cute, fluffy-looking, yellow chicks, which - I'm sure most viewers would be upset to learn - are, in reality, treated as expendable commodities by the egg industry. Each year, 30 million day-old male chicks are gassed or shredded alive shortly after hatching from their shells, because they cannot lay eggs and don't put on weight quickly enough for meat production. The majority of the females end up in battery cages where they have little room to move or stretch their wings. Even in organic free-range systems, hens can be housed in groups of up to 9,000 and are denied access to the outside for up to two-thirds of their lives. And at the end of their short existence, all egg-laying hens end up at the slaughterhouse where their worn-out bodies go into cheap meat products.