Decision on Sylmar Principal : Cruelty to Chickens

With reference to the on hen droppings at Egg City (July 18), there’s more than trouble in Egg City--there’s callous cruelty to pitiful creatures exploited for expediency and inordinate greed.

The “world’s largest chicken ranch,” Egg City, north of Moorpark, has 3 million chickens, which, in small wire mesh cages (37 henhouses, according to the article) with only wire mesh flooring on which to stand so that their manure droppings can conveniently fall on the concrete floor beneath and be scraped up and hauled away, while the miserable chickens grind out eggs like unfeeling manufacturing tools--all for greed and profit. What an abomination!

The 2,000 tons of manure which had piled up beneath the wire mesh cages and the health hazard created, when the clean-up crew went on strike because of wage cuts, are not the only things that stink. Egg City’s inhumane stench reaches high Heaven.

There are real chicken ranches, where chickens are raised on the ground (and the manure dried up by the natural elements), as God intended--not in wire cubicles, confined under the grossest of cruel conditions. Egg City eggs are undesirable in more ways than one, including its modus operandi.

MARJORIE McINTYRE

Burbank