By SCBIZ Daily Staff

MONCK'S CORNER -- Mepkin Abbey is going to reconsider its egg farming practices, the monastery’s abbot stated Wednesday in a letter written to a representative of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA has criticized the abbey for keeping its hens in wire cages and also has taken issue with other egg production practices that it says the monks support. The animal rights group secretly videotaped inside the Mepkin Abbey hen houses in January and Wednesday filed complaints with the S.C. Department of Agriculture, the state Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Trade Commission.

PETA alleges unfair trade practices and false advertising by Mepkin Abbey, which distributes text on its egg cartons stating that the egg farm follows “a centuries-old tradition” that exemplifies “caring cultivation of the earth and its creatures.”

Mepkin Abbey is a member of United Egg Producers, the nation’s largest trade group for egg farmers and is audited regularly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, most recently in October 2006. In its initial response to PETA’s charges, Mepkin’s abbot, Father Stanislaus Gumula, stated that the egg farm follows UEP’s scientific-based guidelines for egg production.

Diane Storey, a spokeswoman for UEP, said 95% of the country’s egg producers use the wire cage method.

When asked why Mepkin Abbey was being singled out, PETA spokesman Bruce Freidrich said, as a Catholic, he could not look away.

The monastery’s practices violate Biblical principles, the Catholic Catechism and the teachings of the pope, Freidrich said.

PETA also has been trying to get UEP to change its standards for years, he added.

After reviewing PETA’s videotape and consulting with poultry scientists, Father Gomula is now asking PETA for a list of suggestions for ways the abbey can improve its egg operation.

“When we receive your recommendations, we will deliberately, carefully and scientifically consider each one of them so that we can determine which, if any, we can implement immediately, which may take some time to implement and which may not be workable,” Gomula stated in his March 14 letter to PETA.

“At this point, we are doing the best we know how to do and are basing our decision on the United Egg Producers’ scientific advisory board’s guidelines, and we are a member of that organization’s Certified Animal Welfare Program,” Gomula wrote.

PETA has argued that UEP’s scientific research is based on improving egg production, not animal welfare.

Mepkin Abbey’s Trappist monks have been selling eggs to support their order for half a century.