Bob Kerridge: Buyers want end to barbaric farming methods

Free-range eggs are becoming more popular but 92 per cent of commercial layer hens still live and die in cages. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

There is a quiet revolution occurring over what we choose to eat, stimulated, in the main, for all the right reasons.

Much of the trend can be attributed to our interest in our own "health and wellness", as well as a greater awareness of our environmental surroundings in which organic is safe, glutton-free is healthy and free-range prevents animal cruelty.

We now want to know more about what we are eating, where it comes from and if both our health and morality boxes are ticked.

That's what we want, even if it is more expensive.

The world of organics is free of fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, growth regulators or colour and flavour enhancers and therefore, it would seem, produces safe and more nutritious food.

Added to that, if we wear our environmental hat we also know that organically grown food is good for the soil and our ecological systems.

Gluten-free food is medically driven and is a diet that is normally prescribed in the event of certain ailments. However, there is a domestic trend to include gluten-free products in our pantries as the absence of wheat, we are told, is good for our health and wellbeing.

As consumers, we now demand to know that anything organic or gluten-free are guaranteed to be so and, as such, certified labelling has become a vital ingredient in our selection process.

Where standard food packaging must now contain a fully detailed ingredient and additive list, in addition to nutritional information, it must also carry warning statements for some ingredients or substances that may be potentially harmful. A label that guarantees that the product is what it says it is is paramount.

Within the food revolution, no cry has been louder than the one for "cruelty-free" food and the increased supermarket shelf space dedicated to free-range eggs and, more recently, pork, is clear evidence of this.

This trend is living proof that we do care deeply about the welfare of the animals who provide our food.

However, as with other products, it is vital that as consumers we have some guarantee that free range is exactly that and not what some intensive farming operations would have us believe.

Hence the emergence of the SPCA-approved blue tick label, which only appears on free-range farms that have been fully audited, inspected and fall within the highest standards demanded by the society.

The SPCA blue tick is a guarantee that now affects free-range eggs, approved barn eggs, eco-barn pork and free-range pork operations.

But while the blue tick authenticates cruelty-free farming practices it will not, sadly, end the barbaric battery farm techniques that are still allowed to continue in New Zealand.

Figures released by the Egg Producers Federation show that about 92 per cent of commercial layer hens are still contained in cages.

That equates to 2.8 million hens who are subjected to life-time incarceration, depriving them of all their natural behavioural functions and, indeed, the simple joy of living. There are few animals over whom we have "dominion" who are as cruelly treated.

Equally horrific is the fate that befalls tens of thousands of pigs in sow stalls and farrowing crates, affecting tens of thousands of animals.

There is only a possible ban on stalls by 2017, thus prolonging the extreme cruelty that has been graphically portrayed in our living rooms.

Ironically, we have an Animal Welfare Act in New Zealand with the purpose of preventing pain or suffering to any animal, regardless of species, and to provide for the physical health and behavioural needs of all animals.

Such provisions include, according to the act, "freedom of movement" and "having sufficient space to display normal patterns of behaviour" - terms which are clearly not met for hens or pigs.

This has been taxing the mind of Green MP Sue Bradford, whose Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill has just popped out of the Parliamentary ballot box.

The purpose of her bill is to revoke the codes of welfare that exist for hens and pigs which, ironically, contradicts the principle act by allowing the continuing animal cruelty that intensive farming inflicts.

The passage of her bill through the House could, however, be the beginning of the end of the agony these animals endure.

* Bob Kerridge is executive director, SPCA Auckland and national president, Royal New Zealand SPCA.