Catriona MacLennan: Chance to outlaw battery cage hell

The Government should act on the strong recommendations of a parliamentary committee and take speedy steps to ban the cruel practice of battery cages for hens.

New Zealand lags well behind other countries in having no plans to phase out the inhumane cages, and the Government has now been given an embarrassing wake-up call about the need to comply with animal welfare laws.

New Zealanders have consistently demonstrated their abhorrence of battery cages. In 1994, 368,000 people signed a petition seeking a referendum on abolition of such cages.

In December 2004, a Close Up at Seven poll found 3986 people in favour of banning battery farming, and only 452 in support of its continuation.

And 120,000 submissions were made on the Animal Welfare (Layer Hens) Code of Welfare.

New Zealand has 2.8 million battery hens, who spend their entire lives imprisoned in cages no larger than an A4 sheet of paper. They are crowded into tiny spaces, meaning they cannot walk properly, stretch their wings, peck and have dust baths.

The cramped conditions lead to aggression. To reduce this, battery hen producers cut off the ends of the hens beaks, and keep them in virtual darkness. Battery hens each produce around 300 eggs a year, depleting their calcium levels and increasing the likelihood of osteoporosis, fractures and broken bones.

The combination of these conditions results in the horrific, mutilated-looking birds seen in pictures of rescued hens.

They commonly have lost a considerable percentage of their feathers and have open wounds.

The Government now has the chance to act to change this, after ignoring previous opportunities.

The Regulations Review Committee on May 9, in an almost unprecedented move, issued a report on a complaint lodged by animal lobby group, the Animal Rights Legal Advocacy Network.

ARLAN had complained to the committee about the operation of the Code of Welfare 2005.

The committee has upheld the complaint, concluding that the law is being breached and battery cages should be phased out.

The Animal Welfare Act 1999 introduced better legal protections for animals, including requirements that they be treated humanely and be able to display their natural behaviour.

Under the act, a series of codes is being produced to set out rules for dealing with animals in particular industries.

However, a loophole in the act allows the welfare provisions to be disregarded in the case of exceptional circumstances.

Intensive farming industries argue that their situations are exceptional, as the economic detriment to them from having to treat animals humanely would be too costly.

The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee is responsible for the codes. When it produced the new code for layer hens, it had been expected that it would follow other countries by providing for a gradual phase-out of the battery cages.

Instead, it simply decided that cages sizes should be increased by an amount sufficient to give each bird extra space - equivalent only to the size of a credit card.

NAWAC accepted the battery farming industry's argument that its circumstances were exceptional, and justified hens being kept in shocking conditions to protect the industry's income.

However, the Regulations Review Committee has firmly rejected that argument. Its report calls for a review of the minimum requirements for keeping hens, to bring them into line with the acts welfare provisions.

The report further recommends that dates be set for phasing out the present battery cages.

The committee's decision also has important implications for the future use of sow stalls for pigs. About 28 per cent of pigs are kept locked in crates measuring 200cm by 60cm for 16 weeks during pregnancy.

A complaint about sow stalls can be expected to be lodged with the Regulations Review Committee, and it will be difficult for the committee to do anything other than reach the some conclusion as it did with battery hens.

Sow stalls mean that pigs cannot display normal behaviours, they are unable to turn around.

They are also made acutely anxious by being unable to make a nest for their piglets.

The cages may be filthy, and pigs suffer from temperature extremes as they do not have sweat glands to allow them to adjust to heat.

The fact that a majority of farmers do not use sow stalls means it will be even more difficult for sow stall advocates to argue that exceptional circumstances apply.

The Government now has the chance to bring New Zealand into line with other nations by banning cruel cages for hens and pigs. Switzerland banned the cages in 1992, and all other European Union countries will have phased them out by 2012.

New Zealand should not tarnish its international reputation by being left behind.

* Catriona MacLennan is a South Auckland barrister