Conscious Choices

Why should people care where their food comes from or if six chickens are in a cage together? Isn't it just a chicken?

"I think everybody who does consume animal products—eggs, meat, dairy—wants to know that the animals are decently treated. I mean, we're a society that loves animals. We have 165 million pets in households; 80 million people are wildlife watchers. We have anti-cruelty standards in this society," Wayne says. "The problem with the factory farm industry ... is that they don't think it's wrong because they have a worldview that animals are commodities. They're units of production. They're objects."

Each chicken has 67 square inches of space—which is about two-thirds the size of a standard sheet of paper. "That's their living space, Oprah, for two years," Wayne says. "I mean, give me a break. That is just awful."