Companies participating in the United Egg Producers' voluntary animal husbandry program—about 80 percent of U.S. egg producers—must stop starving hens as a means of boosting egg production by the end of this year. The UEP is the nation's primary egg industry trade association.

The decades-old practice of forced molting is used by many American producers to terminate egg production briefly so that it will resume at a higher rate afterward. The most common method, used on millions of laying hens each year, involves starving hens for up to two weeks until they lose up to 30 percent of their body weight. The birds stop laying, lose their feathers, then start to produce eggs again when feed is returned.

Internationally recognized poultry welfare specialist Ian J.H. Duncan, Ph.D., has called starvation-induced molting "a barbaric practice which doubles mortality in the flock and leads to great suffering in all the hens involved." While starvation-induced molting is illegal in the United Kingdom, it has been standard practice in the United States.

Although it remains to be seen how egg companies will deal with the UEP's resolution phasing out forced molting through starvation, most participating producers are likely to switch to force-molting hens through low-nutrient diets that still result in weight loss, instead of withholding all feed.

"While these alternative methods may increase aggression and still result in mortality, stress, and discomfort, they are preferable to outright starvation," notes Miyun Park, director of The HSUS's Farm Animal Welfare section. "So it's still a step in the right direction for an industry that many animal advocates view as the most abusive in animal agribusiness."

"The HSUS supports the UEP's ban on starvation," Park adds, "but urges egg producers to adopt molting methods that cause the least suffering. We also encourage egg producers to take the next step in reducing the suffering of laying hens by phasing out the abusive battery cage system, in which 300 million hens are confined in wire enclosures so small they cannot even spread their wings."