Word: hens
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...such sterling virtues as playing the game, bearing the white man's burden, and being kind to animals. To prevent shortsighted swallows from colliding with overhead wires, for exampie, bird lovers festoon the telegraph lines with wooden bobbins, visible a mile away. Last week the lowly barnyard hen was the object of tender British solicitude...
...began when the Ministry of Agriculture encouraged British chicken farmers to adopt the battery system, a U.S. method of making hens lay more eggs. Batteries are 2-foot-square cages, floored with wire netting and exactly big enough to house one plump hen (see cut). Once enclosed in a battery with the light burning 18 hours a day (to encourage overtime), a hen spends the rest of its life (about nine months) eating, sleeping and laying standard-size eggs. Battery hens average 190 eggs a year, their free-roaming barnyard rivals 30 to 40 less...
Philosophical Debate. British farmers agree that the battery system was at least partly responsible for the increase in egg production that put an end to egg rationing (TIME, April 13). But is it fair to the hen? The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (R.S.P.C.A.) said no: "It's unnatural. We don't speak about happiness or unhappiness, because nobody can tell whether a hen is happy or not. [But] if you let expediency rule your action and disregard feeling for others, the world is in a poor state. That kind of thing is like...
...abuse of the power man was given over beasts at the creation of the world," wrote Mrs. Cynthia Legh. Countered H. A. Grundy: "I wouldn't like to eat an egg laid by a hen kept in some people's backyards...
Crowning Glory. From the newspapers, debate spread to scientists. M.P.s and farmers. The University College of South Wales proved to its own satisfaction that the death rate among battery birds is less than half that of birds on the open range. "Laying eggs is a hen's crowning glory," clucked the Farmers' Union. "The lives of [battery hens] are no more unnatural than the lives of a man and his dog in a London flat...