Demeaning conditions and animal cruelty: ex-workers speak up about Josh's Rainbow Eggs

If you'd asked me at the start of the year to tell you about Josh's Rainbow Eggs, you likely would have been met with a blank stare. After quitting eggs (and all animal products) in 2016, the meteoric rise of young Josh and his 'ethical eggs' had escaped my attention, even as they became staples on supermarket shelves. So when I sat down at my desk earlier in the year, the last thing I expected was to see the farm's name in the subject line of an email. 

Josh's Rainbow Eggs started in 2009 when nine-year old Josh started selling eggs from his backyard chickens at their local farmers market. The name arose because, at the time, the family's flock of 24 chickens consisted of various breeds of hens who lay eggs of different colours, shapes and sizes. 16 years later, Josh's Rainbow Eggs is a major supplier to Coles and Woolworths, selling thousands of boxes of eggs to the supermarket giants each week. Instead of 24 hens, they now have over 50,000, spread across 13 free-range sheds. On their website, on social media, on their packaging and on the large sign that stands in front of their Monegeetta property, they claim to produce 'truly free-range, ethical eggs,' which put animal welfare, sustainability and community at the forefront of their business model. 

With multiple awards, puff pieces in TV and print media, and their own self-promotion, Josh and his mother Tamsyn (now CEO of Josh's Rainbow Eggs) have built an image of themselves as the reigning gold standard in terms of ethical egg production in Victoria. They are the eggs people buy when they want to feel good about themselves, the carton that is proudly displayed on a benchtop, rather than hidden guiltily at the back of the fridge. 

When your job is to uncover commercial animal cruelty, if something seems too good to be true it's usually a sign to look closer. When Farm Transparency Project started to receive footage from anonymous investigators who had visited Josh's Rainbow Eggs, we started to do just that. 

The footage was devastating, but unsurprising. It showed hens missing feathers, filthy conditions, and dead chickens who appeared to have been crushed or stepped on. There were signs of feather-pecking, cannibalism and reproductive illness, all common on free-range egg farms across Australia and all things that we had been seeing already as we received footage from multiple free-range and cage-free egg farms across Australia.

But then I sat down at my desk, opened my email and there they were. Two emails from ex-workers claiming multiple exploitative practices at Josh's Rainbow Eggs, including animal cruelty and working conditions that can only be described as demeaning and bizarre. 

While both workers wished to remain anonymous to protect themselves from possible retribution from the farm, they agreed to speak to me about their experiences and provide statements to Farm Transparency Project. To protect their identities I will refer to them as Summer and Winter. 

Summer worked at Josh's Rainbow Eggs for four months, both outside the farm and inside the packing facility where eggs are sorted and packed for distribution. During her time there, she was forced to work shifts lasting over 12 hours, with minimal breaks. The pace was fast and unforgiving and, when the packing machine broke (as it often did), they were ordered to use toothbrushes to scrub the floor until the machine was fixed. Fridays were cleaning days and Summer recalled how Josh would use an air compressor to blow dirt back into recently cleaned machines, forcing them to start from the beginning. Workers who struggled to keep up were dismissed and replaced, or pressured to return to work faster. Summer remembers a colleague of hers becoming injured and being pressured to return to work against medical advice.

Summer told FTP that workers were frequently confronted about their "speed and efficiency, with remarks such as asking whether we were unwell or 'having a bad day' if we failed to meet their expectations."

She also claims that new workers "were often invited in for one- or two-day 'trials', not as genuine opportunities for employment, but rather as a way to cover short-term staffing gaps without any intention of hiring them."

In phone calls and her own statement, Winter recalls similar experiences. Staff, she told Farm Transparency Project, are seen as expendable and are "treated more like machines than human beings." Winter describes a culture of "fear and surveillance" where workers were threatened with dismissal if they were unable to keep up with the fast pace. Workers, she said, would "work frantically, skipping bathroom and water breaks, pushing though injuries, dehydration, emotional and physical exhaustion, all to try and meet rigid deadlines and constant arbitrary changes to process."

For both ex-workers however, what was most distressing was the treatment of the chickens. 

Summer recalls seeing a manager kicking and shoving hens out of her way. She observed deaths in the sheds on a daily basis, which she photographed on her phone during her time working there. 

Photos taken at Josh's Rainbow Eggs by ex-worker 'Summer.'

While working on the farm, both Summer and Winter received information from a manager that the farm utilised the controversial practice of 'forced moulting'. Moulting (the shedding and renewing of feathers) is a natural process for chickens, which is sometimes forced on factory farms through controlled lighting and starvation. Starvation is a technique commonly used on such farms at the end of a hen's first laying cycle, to improve the productivity and quality of eggs in subsequent cycles. The ex-workers revealed to Farm Transparency Project that Josh's Rainbow Eggs uses starvation to induce forced moulting in hens. Forced moulting is not permitted under RSPCA approved standards and is not covered by an industry code of practice, making it potentially illegal under Australia's animal protection laws.

Both ex-workers remember that, after being told not to enter a shed because forced moulting was occurring, this admission was quickly retracted by the manager. However, workers would be prohibited from entering certain sheds at certain times, which both Winter and Summer believed was an effort to keep the practice of forced moulting a secret. 

The footage Farm Transparency Project received from anonymous investigators, while completely separate to the testimonies of Summer and Winter, nonetheless supports their concerns about the facility. Images of the crushed bodies of dead hens, missing feathers and filthy conditions contrast with the farm's marketing, where the ever-smiling Josh holds glossy, healthy hens or cartons of eggs. 

Even with all I've discovered about Josh's Rainbow Eggs since the beginning of the year, the farm still harbours mysteries. In the Australian egg industry, layer hens are killed at appoximately 18 months old when their egg production begins to slow. These hens will either be killed on the farm, using CO2 gas, foam asphyxiation or other methods, or shoved in crates and sent to the slaughterhouse. According to Josh's website however, this is not the fate for their hens. They claim that all of their 50,000+ hens are eventually rehomed to "backyard families so they can live out their lives." Yet, neither of the workers we spoke to had any knowledge of what would have to be a large-scale rehoming project, and we could find no evidence of Josh's Rainbow Eggs advertising chickens for rehoming. Can we really believe that tens of thousands of hens are being rehomed to families around Australia every 18 months without a trace? 

Before publishing the information we received from ex-workers, we contacted Josh's Rainbow Eggs with a formal complaint about their false and misleading claims that they produce 'ethical eggs.' They did not respond to our questions before this article was published.