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Restaurant and grocery chain Braum's, Inc. ("Braum's"), bills itself as a family business, but in its Fresh Market stores, it sells eggs from a massive operation that confines nearly a million hens in miserable conditions.
At a farm operated by Mahard Egg Farm, Inc. ("Mahard")—which supplies eggs to Braum's, among others—PETA captured video footage showing hens beaten to death, dead birds left to rot alongside survivors inside battery cages, live chickens left in manure pits amid corpses and piles of waste up to 5 feet high, and hens who had died from heatstroke.
Workers killed more than 49,000 unwanted "spent" hens by beating and gassing them. The birds were yanked from cages, slammed against metal boxes, stuffed into the boxes by the dozens, and crudely gassed with carbon dioxide before being dumped, often still alive, into trucks. Workers beat the birds' heads against the metal bars and sides of the trucks and bludgeoned them with a board. Those who managed to survive were left to endure an agonizing, prolonged death under the bodies of other chickens.
Nearly 8,000 hens died—many of apparent heatstroke—when temperatures in the farm's sheds reached 106 degrees during the summer. The birds had no place to stand, sit, or lie except for the wire flooring of the cages, and most were missing feathers, often as a result of stress-induced fighting and self-mutilation.
PETA has informed Braum's of the abuse uncovered at Mahard, but it has been unresponsive. Please urge Braum's to reconsider its relationship with the company and take decisive action to spare these animals even one more day of squalor and agony.