Hey a humane death is sometimes more than humans get, the only absolute guarantee in life is death. They have already mandated that chickens, at least egg layers are free range and I guess a few more cents is not to much for getting them out of tight little cages. My parents had friends that owned an egg ranch and even as a kid it seemed cruel. Bottom line I seem to recall something about man being given dominion over animals, not that animals were to be treated as our equal.
Well, first off, an egg farm is not farm. That is industry. Assembly line. Not knocking it necessarily, but actual farms have always raised free-range chickens... Where possible anyway. The coop and the house are for the collection of eggs and night time protection as a general rule. Most farms turn the chickens out of the pen to forage during the day.
And if that ain't possible due to predator pressure, the chickens are still fed a wide variety of greens and meats in the shape of garden scraps and kitchen scraps. And generally the pen size is directly proportioned by how often it would need to be cleaned out. Kept chickens tend to have a larger pen for that purpose - The amount of time it takes to turn the floor of the pen to compost is the key. If you clean out your pen and the sh*t is hot, then you either need to leave it uncleaned longer, or you need a larger pen. Because the floor of that pen should be putting out compost.
Our layers are kept penned. Our meat birds are in chicken tractors. Neither is inhumane treatment.
