Instead of boiling 19,000 chicken eggs for decorating and the annual South Lawn roll, the White House is being urged to use ceramic replacements for its 138th Annual Easter Egg Roll on March 28.
“For the hens crammed into tiny wire cages, an Easter egg hunt is nothing to crow about,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on President and Mrs. Obama to consider making their last White House Easter Egg Roll the kindest one in U.S. history.”
Instead of real eggs, which PETA notes takes hens 34 hours to make, they are offering plastic eggs and dyeable ceramic EggNots, created for children allergic to eggs to dye, paint, and play with. They are also reusable.
PETA is also offering event volunteers a vegan egg-free “scramble.”
The Easter Egg Roll is one of several famous events at the annual event, which this year has a theme of “Let’s Celebrate.”
Past pleadings from PETA have been ignored by the White House which this year announced, that “14,500 hard-boiled and dyed eggs are used between the egg roll and the egg hunt” and “4,500 boiled white eggs are decorated at the Egg Dying station throughout the course of the day.”
PETA’s letter to President and Mrs. Obama follows:
Dear President and Mrs. Obama,
I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 3 million members and supporters with an offer to hatch a new tradition for the White House Easter Egg Roll: Instead of using hard-boiled chicken eggs—which took chickens 34 hours to lay and which are slated for use in this year’s egg roll, egg hunt, and egg decorating station—will you please accept a donation of plastic eggs and ceramic EggNots for use in the event or just switch to them? In gratitude for your compassion for chickens, we would happily provide event volunteers with a delicious, healthy Follow Your Heart vegan scramble in place of the scheduled chicken egg breakfast.
Using cruelly obtained eggs from female chickens who will be killed when their egg-laying usefulness ends and who are exploited because of their sex is inarguably inconsistent with the goals of the 2016 “Let’s Celebrate!” theme. For hens on factory farms, Easter is no time to rejoice. One shed may contain tens of thousands of birds crammed together in something like the Black Hole of Calcutta—five to 10 in a tiny wire “battery cage” in which a hen does not even have enough space to stretch even one of her wings. It can take up to 34 hours in these conditions for one hen to produce just one of the thousands of eggs slated to be used at the Easter Egg Roll. Once the hens’ egg production drops, they are yanked out of the cages and tossed into crates—as you’ll see here, sometimes having their wings and legs broken in the process—sent on a frightening journey to a slaughterhouse, then shackled so that their throats can be cut while they’re still conscious and flapping.
Switching to synthetic eggs that can be reused year after year is a terrific solution to the sad spectacle and wastefulness of using thousands of hard-boiled eggs each spring, and offering ceramic eggs at the egg-dying station won’t lock families with egg allergies out of the fun. We hope you’ll consider the ways in which our offer will modernize this White House tradition, and we look forward to hearing from you. Here’s wishing you and your family a very happy Easter.
Respectfully yours,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
President
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
