Among industrialized countries, only France
and Australia have remained independent of
the handful of multinational corporations that
provide laying stock to the egg industry.
Mass Production The 20th century saw the
general farm lose its poultry shed to the
poultry farm or ranch, which has in turn been
split up into separate hatcheries and meat and
egg factories. Economies of scale dictate that
production units be as large as possible — one
caretaker can manage a flock of 100,000, and
many ranches now have a million or more
laying hens. Today’s typical layer is born in
an incubator, eats a diet that originates largely
in the laboratory, lives and lays on wire and
under lights for about a year, and produces
between 250 and 290 eggs. As Page Smith and
Charles Daniel put it in their Chicken Book,
the chicken is no longer “a lively creature but
merely an element in an industrial process
whose product [is] the egg.”