Yup, I'm going to ruin the chickens for you.
I've done beef and pork. Are you sure you want to hear about this?
Well, if you're that much of a glutton for punishment...
Laying hens (the ones your eggs come from) spend their short little lives piled together 6 or 7 together in a wire condo about 24" x 24". They are packed too tightly to ever fully stretch their wings. All of their natural chickeny instincts are thwarted. There's no ground to scratch or bugs to eat from yummy 4 day old cow poop. The accommodations are so caring and loving, the chickens often resort to acts of cannibalism as well as rubbing their breast against the wire mesh until they are bald and bleeding. Roughly 10% of the hens, ungracious enough to appreciate the care and concern put into their upkeep, respond to the stress of their existence by dying; don't worry, that loss is figured into the cost of production. When the surviving (not to be confused with living) hens output begins to ebb, they are "force-molted" to stimulate a last surge of egg laying before they give out; this is accomplished by the five star treatment of, no not massages and manicures, but by cutting them off from food, water and sunlight for several days. They lay their last few eggs, then they die.
So...now you know what I know. Don't you feel better now? Oh, and just so you don't think that the hen's pitiful existence was all for nothing... When you are looking through the eggs at the grocery store, and you put a package back because one of the dozen is broken, the grocery store does not switch out the broken one with a whole one, it just tosses the perfectly good remaining eleven into the garbage. Go us!
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