Well Rob, I’m not so sure about the environment in close proximity to the bean-eater! Use Beano! Please! 
Sage, I’m not really familiar with chicken-for-meat operations, but I’ve spent some time in a commercial egg operation, and those birds live a rather, um, unusual life, for lack of a better word.
They’re kept in tiny metal mesh cages, and yes, the floors are mesh, which allows the chickenshit to drop through into collection troughs. The floors of the cages are also slanted, so the eggs roll handily out of the cage for easy collection. The mesh ain’t much for walkin’, but that’s OK because the folks running the place don’t want ‘em walkin’, they want ‘em layin’ eggs. In any case, the cages are so short the chickens can’t stand up. As a result, their leg muscles soon atrophy and they can’t walk, even if you turn them loose.
During a ‘professional’ laying hen’s career – which usually lasts only a few months – she receives plenty of water and VERY high-quality (and expensive) food (designed to promote lots of big eggs). Without cable TV or PC’s, the chickens have little to do but crank out hen-fruit at an AMAZING rate, some averaging almost an egg a day.
A fellow down the road from my dad had a 15,000-hen egg operation for years. (Oddly enough, the guy ALWAYS smelled like chickenshit.) When he decided to get out of the business, he sold some of the healthier birds to my dad and other neighbors, but the bulk of them, puny, tumor-ridden specimens, went to – you guessed it – a rather well-known soup company.
Mmm-mmm good!
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
T
Everybody seems to be concentrating on fines and/or punitive damages- but what about criminal prosecution? It seems to me the responsible managers should be charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. Civil penalties may be a deterrent if large enough, but I’ll wager the sight of colleagues being hauled off to the slammer would be an even better deterrent.
Agreed, nebuli. Regulating the bathroom usage of your employees should be a felony! 
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
AuntiePam is right. Worker’s Comp laws generally prevent a worker who is injured on the job from suing his/her employer. That doesn’t prevent a suit by that worker against someone else (like the manufacturer of the defective machine that caused the injury.) Of course, the error that led to the injury was the employer’s alone, the employee is SOL. (except for the relatively small comp benefit.)