Confining hens is completely unnecessary, campaigners say.
Photo: 123RF
Battery cages, which can house between four and 10 egg-laying hens, will be phased out by the end of next year, but the larger colony cages are still legal.
SAFE campaign manager Jessica Chambers said there were 2.3 million hens living in colony cages.
Confining hens was not only cruel but completely unnecessary, she said. Our Animal Welfare Act states that animals must have the ability to perform normal behaviours. That s the law, but a hen in a colony cage, she can t do any of her normal behaviours and those include scratching at the earth, foraging, stretching her wings, moving around freely or avoiding aggressive hens in the cages so basically it s so highly restrictive and there s so few enrichments available to them.
File photo.
Photo: Unsplash
Poultry Industry Association and the Egg Producers Federation executive director Michael Brooks said it had been detected in three flocks of meat chickens and on three egg farms in the North Island with some linked to a hatchery in the Auckland area.
None of the affected eggs or meat had entered the market for human consumption, but it was a blow to the industry, he said. We ve never had Salmonella Enteritidis before in this country in our poultry industry. This has been a real shock to the industry but we are meeting the concerns and we will be putting place through a mandated government scheme - which we agree with - to ensure testing is of the highest level and consumers are protected.
Auckland farmer loses sentence appeal for misrepresenting 3 million caged eggs as free range
23 Dec, 2020 04:32 AM
4 minutes to read
A West Auckland chicken farmer has lost an appeal against his home detention after misrepresenting millions of caged eggs as free range. Xue (Frank) Chen was sentenced to a year of home detention after pleading guilty to a single representative charge of obtaining by deception, revealed by the Herald in July.
He is serving it at his Henderson Valley Rd poultry farm.
However, Chen challenged the decision last month in the High Court on the basis the starting point, of three years imprisonment, adopted by Judge Christopher Field was too high. His lawyer, Fletcher Pilditch, also argued home detention was not the least restrictive outcome nor one which best provided for his rehabilitation and reintegration.