Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs Sheds Light in New Edition

UPC President Karen Davis Updates the Plight of Chickens, Health and Environmental Issues in Groundbreaking Book on the Poultry Industry

Karen Davis wrote Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs in the mid-1990s to focus attention on the billions of chickens buried alive on factory farms. The book was a catalyst for animal rights activists seeking to develop effective strategies to expose and relieve the plight of chickens. United Poultry Concerns’ campaign in the 1990s to reveal the U.S. egg industry’s cruel practice of starving hens to force them to molt their feathers and cut the cost of egg production was decisive in shifting advocacy attention to chickens and the hidden causes of Salmonella and Campylobacter food poisoning.

The Newly Revised Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs documents what has happened since the book first appeared – the waging of high-profile campaigns to get rid of battery cages for laying hens, undercover investigations exposing the appalling cruelty to chickens and turkeys by poultry industry workers, globalization of chicken production and its effect on the environment and spread of avian influenza, and how farm animal sanctuaries have become key players in debunking industry myths with truthful accounts of the sensitive and intelligent birds being brutalized in the name of “food.”

“When you pick up a chicken on the road who has fallen off a truck on the way to slaughter, the huge white bird with the little peeping voice and baby blue eyes feels like liquid cement,” says Karen Davis in Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs. The birds are sick with respiratory infections and they are often rotting with diseases. This latest edition effectively explains why these birds are so ill, why eating them makes people sick, and what can be done to cure the pathology of the modern poultry industry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Karen Davis, PhD is the founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. She is the author of several books and numerous articles for the national press and was featured on National Public Radio. A major article in The Washington Post titled “For the Birds” won the 1999 Ark Trust Genesis Award for Outstanding Newspaper Feature. The article can be read by going to www.upc-online.org/karenbio.htm. Karen Davis can be reached at karen@upc-online.org or 757-678-7875.