While governments appear loath to consider the appalling suffering endured by battery hens, animal activists are beginning to have some success with local councils, encouraging them to ban caged eggs from their catering. The movement is set to grow as community awareness grows.

But barn laid systems are not perfect, often with thousands of hens confined in conditions almost as crowded as cages.

Anyone who has "adopted" hens from a battery farm will know what tragic figures they are at first sight. Almost featherless, with mutilated beaks, and often unable to walk, they gaze in wonderment at their first exposure to fresh air and sunshine.

There are, in reality, few elements of Australian farming that can claim to be anything approaching "world's best practice" in animal welfare. The way battery hens, meat chickens and pigs are intensively farmed should be exposed to the public by law in order that people can make informed choices about what they buy, and truth in labelling of these products must become mandatory. Australia has little to be proud of too while it encourages the brutal live animal export trade, "surgical" spaying, castrations, and other mutilations without anaesthsia or analgesia. Australia is even going backwards, with the Federal government currently oversighting a review into whether animals REALLY need to be stunned before their throats are cut; this to pander to Middle Eastern markets.

Some animals are certainly more equal than others in Australia. If dogs and cats were treated as "livestock" is treated, the courts would be full of prosecutions.

But animal welfare legislation is left to the enforcement of a charity, and it is the only legislation in the country to be so. The charity, even if it had the will, lacks the means to effectively carry out its role, and that is just how governments like it.

There is only one thing that drives what most people eat and that is PRICE.

The very same reason why 85% of all pork consumed in Australia is imported, mostly to be turned into bacon and ham. PRICE.

Consumers demand cheap prices from retailers largely because food is one of the few areas they can cut back on when times are tough.

If you remove battery hens, which in turn makes free range eggs etc more expensive, consumers will simply reduce the number of eggs they consume which in turn will cost jobs.

Unfortunately you can't have your cake and eat it.

So rehctub, is your argument that the ends justify the means? And if so, that egregious cruelty can be justified on economic grounds, in the form of subjecting these animals to short, wretched lifetimes of abject misery? I believe that it isn't always about price. I think a lot of it is about ignorance, and that is now being driven home to the pork "industry" by Animals Australia's "Lucy Speaks" campaign.

I have had people whom I would never have thought would make a contribution to that sort of cause tell me that they have sent money to AA to extend the campaign. On these threads, PF has shown us time and time again that there ARE humane alternatives.

Don't you think that's what we should be aiming for, rather than copping out with the economics argument? Nor do I think that it would necessarily follow that if battery cages were removed free-range eggs would be more expensive. If battery cages were removed, there wouldn't be a choice.

If jobs are dependent on the continuation of cruelty, then they are the wrong jobs, I'm afraid. Australia will one day be forced to come into line with (the better) international standards, and jobs change all the time according to factors like community expectations and market forces.

Nicky

Niki I don't know if you went through the last recession back in the 90's but let me tell you, that if this country slips into recession then many sensitive areas such as cruelty to animals and the environment will take second place if people have to worry about where their next dollar/meal is going to come from. And yes, if battery hens are banned then believe me the price off eggs will sky rocket. Furthermore, do you really think that free range eggs come from hens that laze about basking in the sunshine while someone strolls through with a cane basket and collects their eggs. Or, the next time you enjoy your bacon and eggs, spare a thought for the pigs from over seas that it came from. Many piggeries OS are 7 stories high where the piglets are born on the top floor then as they progress through their force feed 5 month life are drafted to the next floor down only to arrive at the bottom floor where they are killed for processing into boneless pork ready for export to Aus and other places.
Of course the alternative would be to go to a country butcher and pay top dollar per kilo for old fashion bacon and, if you already buy this form of bacon and pay less then chances are you are being miss led but as always, as long as the price is right it's all OK.
The unfortunate truth is that everyone has to pay their rent/mortgage, pay for petrol at whatever the price is, pay their utilities bills, pay their phone bill....the list goes on. The reality is that food is one of the very few expenses where consumers can cut back in tough times, entertainment is another, so when time get tough, the dollar wins in 99.9% of the cases. Now you can either accept this or go on holding your head in the sand. It is your choice.

Nikki I don't know where your fulfilment is. Caged birds are out barn birds are out, so wat do we do with them? leave them to the foxes;. or go without. I slaughtered beef for 15 years, and i tell you a beast dies more humainly, with a nick behind the ears than, any stunn stun gun will do. A bullocks skull can be 2 inches thick and a stunn gun will not penetrate the brain.

Rehcteb and olly, thanks for your contributions, and of course I take on board what you say (despite the fact that I don't buy bacon or eggs! I have some "spent hens" from a battery farm).

Certainly there will be a section of the community to whom price is the dominating factor, but I still believe that if most people saw the conditions in which these animals are kept, they would make conscious choices. I have some faith in human nature to the extent that most people really despise this degree of egregious cruelty. I think that as awareness grows, markets for intensively farmed products will decline until ultimately they will be the exception rather than the rule.

Olly, your comment about stun guns, and a "nick behind the ears" especially interested me. Could you possible provide more detail about your thoughts? I also have difficulty with what must go on at slaughterhouses where animals must have some awareness of what is going to happen, even if they have no concept of death as we know it.

Cheers
Nicky

Nicky It seems you need to do some reserch before you proceed with your campains, don't take the word of others. Meat bird chickens are just that, they will not survive outside outside a cluster situation. They get water and food on demand, heating and cooling under controlled conditions . There's a lot of people that would give their buck teeth to be in that situation.
Pigs are like sheep, they like to be in close company. When you see a picture of a pig in restraint it is for medical, breeding, or as a protection for offspring. Pigs have a canableistic tendancy towards their own litter. If it was not for this situation AU would have been overrun with wild pigs years ago.
Sheep being electrically stunned to me this is useless, it was set up to satisfy people who think a sheep needed anesthetic. All it does is cause tension in the muscles of the animal. Each animal is dispenced through a [ knocking box] where the animal is electrocuted behind the head, and then it falls on to a bollard where it's throat is cut. I believe the operation should take place without the electrocution.
Cattle are shot with a bolt gun with varying degrees of success, this also causes muscle tension. Those with to thick a skull are cut across the back of the ears which severs the spinal cord. Cattle are better off being nicked on the side of the neck, and the animal dies without as many operations.

Jason60, those comments could only have come from an intensive farmer. The meat chickens I have seen were so grossly deformed that they could not reach any food or water that was available. Battery hens endure the worst living conditions that could be inflicted upon any creature - having seen the inside of these places.

Nor are pigs naturally cannabalistic. These sensitive, clean, intelligent animals are driven insane by the severity of their confinement, and there can never be any excuse for that. They are deprived of all their natural behaviours, and I have seen the swaying, and bar biting and heard the screaming. "Close company"? Who do you think that fools? They are in concrete and steel cages, with only enough room (the "lucky" ones) to move a step back or a step forward.

Do you keep your dog and cat like that? Why not? What is the difference?

If it is so good for their "welfare", why do they all have to be fed massive doses of antibiotics just to keep them alive in their filthy conditions (long enough to be dragged off to slaughter, at least)?

Read up on the "Five Freedoms"; it's not rocket science. If you must farm these animals, at the very - very - least, you owe them some form of compassion in their short lives and a humane death. Leaving animals in pain and choking to death on their own blood for whatever time it takes is not humane. If I were to chop off your leg, would you want an anaesthetic?

Nicky

This is a quote that Dickie posted on another thread:

"Matthew Scully, was a former executive assistant and chief speechwriter for Bush during his first term. A former literary editor of National Review, he is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (St. Martin's Press), named by The Atlantic Monthly as one of the ten best non-fictions of 2002: He advises:

'In all cases, the law should apply to corporate farmers - a few simple rules that better men would have been observing all along:

'We cannot just take from these creatures, we must give them something in return. We owe them a merciful death, and we owe them a merciful life. And when human beings cannot do something humanely, without degrading both the creatures and ourselves, then we should not do it at all'".

Says it all really, doesn't it?

Nicky

Thank you Katrina Sharman for an elightening article.

Last year, concerned citizens in Victoria, infiltrating a battery hen farm advised that:

"they saw illegal overcrowding, filthy conditions, birds eating dead birds and others stuck in manure pits.

``The birds were screaming, bodies were rotting in cages, bins of dead bodies are left in the sheds and sick and exhausted birds are left to fend for themselves in tiny cages,''

This is an industry which operates under obfuscation when one is assured that:

"Our big aim at the moment is to try and educate people generally and let them know that chickens are not fed hormones and haven't been fed hormones in Australia since about the early 1960s," ACMF spokesman Jeff Fairbother said.

Research commissioned by the Australian Egg Corporation Ltd revealed:

"Some 20 pesticides and veterinary drugs were identified as being of importance to the Australian egg industry. The chemicals used included the insecticides azamethiphos, carbaryl, maldison, permethrin and pyrethrum, the antibiotics bacitracin, chlortetracycline, flavophospholipol, lincomycin and tiamulin, the coccidiostats amprolium, lasalocid, monensin, nicarbazin, salinomycin, spectinomycin and dewormers such as levamisole and piperazine.

"Also identified were amoxycillin, sulfadiazine, sulfadimidine, sulfaquinoxoline, toltrazuril and trimethoprim, which are all currently the subject of minor-use consideration by the APVMA.

"There were also 21 pesticides that, on the basis of detection in the NRS grains program and/or their lipophilic nature were identified as chemicals that had the potential to carry over into eggs through the diet.

"There were no chemicals identified where the level of residue detected in monitoring programs was above the Maximum Residue Level (MRL.)

However, several of the chemicals identified as being of importance to the egg industry did not have MRLs established for eggs (amoxycillin/monensin, nicarbazin, piperazine, sulfadiazine, sulfadimidine, sulfaquinoxaline, tiamulin, toltrazuril and trimethoprim).

"Furthermore, in a number of instances (amprolium, piperazine and tiamulin), no Acceptable Daily Level (ADL) had been set."

So those who couldn't care less about the heinous cruelty inflicted on our feathered friends, may consider the health impacts to their own well-being when they purchase these products which are ethically, morally and medically unfit for human consumption.

There are howls of protest from the poultry and the pork industries as community campaigns seeking to eliminate what is possibly the most egregious cruelty to "farmed" animals in Australia, particularly battery hens, gain momentum.

It is reported that the industry has written to every Councillor in Australia as numerous Councils implement bans on the use of battery cage eggs from their catering - it's small but it's a start. We CAN destroy the markets for these cruelly derived "products" from all intensive farming operations.

The egg industry informs us that beaks are mutilated to prevent "cannibalism" - "cannibalism" that certainly does not manifest itself amongst my free-range, formerly 'concentration camp' hens.

Dickie's information about the chemicals is also very enlightening. Those of you who eat these products should be giving some thought to what you are consuming - if not for the sake of the wretched animals.

Nicky