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Mercy For Animals, a nonprofit focused on preventing animal cruelty, released a video they say was taken via hidden camera at Shady Brae Farms in Pennsylvania. This is a still from the video.

(Mercy For Animals)

BOSTON - Bloody eggs. Dead, rotting hens left in cages with live birds still laying the eggs. The cages are so small the live hens can barely move around.

Mercy For Animals, an international nonprofit focused on animal protection, released a hidden camera video with those images and more, accusing Shady Brae Farms of "extreme cruelty" to the birds and "filthy" cages.

Shady Brae Farms is based in Marietta, Pennsylvania, and supplies eggs to a distributor who then sells the eggs to Massachusetts stores. The company did not immediately respond to a voicemail left on Wednesday morning.

Matt Rice, director of investigations for Mercy For Animals, said at one Pennsylvania facility are 560,000 birds packed in windowless sheds, where they are reduced to "mere egg producing machines."

"This is sickening animal abuse," he said during a press conference in which he released the hidden camera video.

Mercy For Animals is part of a coalition of animal rights groups looking to place a question on the Massachusetts statewide 2016 ballot in November. The question proposes prohibiting the confinement of egg-laying hens, calves and breeding pigs in small cages.

Rice said the ballot question also prohibits the sale of eggs, pork and veal from animals confined to the small cages, so it would have an effect on a supplier like Shady Brae Farms.

The Associated Press reported this morning the video put forward by Mercy For Animals couldn't be independently verified, though the nonprofit y did provide pay stubs for undercover employee to show the person worked there. The news service added:

The caged animal question, if it makes it on to the 2016 ballot in Massachusetts, would apparently only affect one farm in the state: Diemand Farm in the Western Massachusetts town of Wendell.

Food retailers, like Target, Costco and Safeway, are steadily shifting to cage-free eggs. Fast food companies like McDonald's, Burger King and Subway are also asking egg suppliers for cage-free eggs.

Dunkin' Donuts, which is based in Canton, Mass., said last year they plan to use only cage-free eggs by 2025.

Panera Bread is shooting for even earlier: The company announced last year they're converting to completely cage-free eggs by 2020.

Watch a video from the Mercy For Animals press conference in Boston below.