The demand for eggs in the Canary Islands is enormous, driven not least by the millions of tourists who visit the small islands every year. Yet hardly anyone asks where these eggs actually come from.
For the second time in a row, a team from Animals’ Angels has accompanied around 10,000 young hens on their journey from northern Spain to an egg-production farm in Tenerife. The birds are crammed into small, outdated metal cages on board the truck - unable to stand upright or move properly and touching the cages’ ceiling with their heads and backs. In total, they are transported for more than 75 hours by road and sea. The sea crossing alone, on a roll-on-roll-off ferry from Cádiz via Gran Canaria to Tenerife, takes over 52.5 hours.
As in the previous week, the truck is equipped with a water system. However, due to the insufficient number of drinkers and the extremely high loading density, it is impossible that all birds can reach the nipple drinkers in these small cages. Moreover, throughout the entire journey, they receive no food. Feeding them inside the truck is simply impossible, meaning the hens remain hungry for more than three days. For Maria, Alba, Cristina, and at least 17 other hens, the ordeal is too much. They do not survive. Our hearts break as we watch the workers throw their small, fragile, lifeless bodies out of the containers. Those who survive face confinement inside a closed stable for the next 12 to 18 months, until their egg production declines. Then they will be slaughtered. They are not seen as individuals with feelings and needs but merely counted as numbers in a system driven solely by profit.
These ultra-long transports are not only ethically indefensible - they are also illegal. We are now preparing complaints against those responsible and calling for decisive official action so that the suffering and deaths of Maria, Alba, Cristina, and all the others were not in vain. These illegal transports must stop!
