Hi, I’m Emily Deschanel.

As you may have heard, my home state of California recently enacted an historic, common sense law, requiring farmers to provide egg-laying hens with at least enough space to stand up, turn around, stretch their limbs, and engage in other natural behaviors.

Now I need your help to extend this basic consideration to the millions of egg-laying hens outside of California who are forced to endure lives of constant misery and deprivation inside battery cages.

What’s a battery cage?

A battery cage is a tiny, wire cage about the size of a filing cabinet drawer. Typically, up to a dozen chickens are crammed into a single cage, and the cages are stacked in tiers inside giant windowless sheds that can run the length of two football fields. Each shed can confine hundreds of thousands of chickens, each with less space than a single sheet of notebook paper to live out her entire life.

In such extreme confinement, these poor animals can’t even spread their wings, much less move around without stepping on and climbing over other hens.

Just weeks before California voters went to the polls to cast their ballots to give egg-laying hens more room, my friends at Mercy For Animals released startling video footage from inside two of the state’s largest egg factories. The videos showed birds packed in cages so tightly that they could hardly move, countless chickens injured and trapped by cage wire, and dead hens left to rot in cages with live birds still laying eggs for human consumption.

Although these inherently cruel cages are now banned in California, millions of animals throughout the rest of country continue to suffer in these gut-wrenching conditions.

This has got to stop.

Please join me, and Mercy For Animals, in calling on United Egg Producers—the industry trade group that represents nearly 90 percent of U.S. egg producers—to require all its members to go cage-free. Thirty seconds of your time to sign this petition could help alleviate the needless suffering of millions of chickens.

The UEP already has cage-free guidelines developed by leading poultry scientists, as well as an independent auditing program to ensure compliance. All that is left is for the UEP to make these guidelines a requirement for egg producers who wish to be UEP certified.

It’s time for egg producers nationwide to end the cruel and inhumane confinement of hens in wire cages so small they cannot walk, spread their wings, or engage in many natural behaviors.

Thank you