Animals Australia said today’s announcement to delay a ban on the use of battery cages in Australia until 2036 would sentence up to 55 million layer hens to a lifetime of extreme mental and physical suffering.
“We have waited seven long years for this woefully inadequate decision which rubber-stamps mass animal cruelty to continue for another 10 to 15 years,” said Animals Australia CEO Glenys Oogjes
“Millions more birds will endure short lifetimes of unbearable suffering as a result of this unjustifiably long transition period,” she said.
The animal protection organisation labelled the decision an “international embarrassment” that left Australia lagging decades behind other developed countries in ending the inhumane practice of confining hens to barren battery cages in factory farms.
By contrast, New Zealand is set to complete its phase-out of barren battery cages this year. The European Union voted to end the use of barren battery cages back in 1999 and phased them out totally by 2012. In the United States, 10 states have banned the cages or started phasing them out.
“It is an utter embarrassment for a country that has the opportunity to lead in animal welfare standards to be bringing up the rear by continuing to support cruel production systems created in another era,” Ms Oogjes said.
The panel conducting the review of the Poultry Code received over 167,000 public submissions with the overwhelming majority – 99 per cent – demanding an end to the use of battery cages.
“Australians have for many years loudly opposed the use of battery cages yet this decision once again falls far short of community expectations,” Ms Oogjes said.
“It is another example of the broken system of creating animal welfare standards in this country that favours industry and ignores advances in scientific knowledge and associated ethical imperatives.”
Barren battery cages have long been regarded internationally as an outdated and barbaric form of factory farming. Stacks of the wire cages in large poultry factories are crammed with hens that barely have room to move and are unable to perform natural behaviours such as flapping their wings, nesting, dust-bathing, foraging and perching.
