Dr Michael Morris Animal welfare writer nzchas.canterbury

There are only eight days to go to send in a submission to the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) for a ban on all layer hen cages. The closing date for submissions is extended to April 29 after the Christchurch earthquake. I urge everyone who has not yet done so to let their preferences be known. This is a window of opportunity that will not come again for another 10 years when the code of welfare is required to be reviewed again.

It appears, based on a Dominion Post article of February 17 that NAWAC has prejudged the outcome of the democratic submissions process and will be capitulating to industry demands and moving to so-called ‘furnished' cages. As mentioned in an earlier blog (Feb 2011) these are almost as restrictive as the current cages as far as not allowing hens to express normal patterns of behaviour. NAWAC chair John Hellstrom takes the standard approach of sneering at the general public demand for more humane cage-free alternatives, by stating that public sympathy is ‘merely' based on ‘deeply held values' and not on science.

In fact, if all science is taken into account, there is no shortage of scientific evidence that hens suffer in furnished cages. Whenever there is a great deal of money to be made out of exploiting animals, other humans or the planet, there is never any shortage of scientists and veterinarians ready to prostitute their art for the purpose of making a quick buck and telling the industry what it wants to hear.

However, the consensus among scientists who are independent of industry interests is that battery cages and colony cages are both inherently inhumane. Non-cages systems also sometimes have issues with cannibalism and injurious pecking which can lead to high mortality, but these are sporadic and can be managed through good husbandry practices. What proponents of cages also don't tell you, is that there are sporadic episodes of high mortality in battery cages as well. For example, the first Christchurch earthquake in September 2010 killed all hens in an entire battery operation. We have recently read in the news about another incident in which an entire flock were burned to death in a hideous fashion.

Any law in a democratically accountable country like New Zealand must be based on science and values. The science tells us that hens suffer in cages. Public values have been codified into a law, the Animal Welfare Act, which has at its core the ethical proposition that animals should not be made to suffer for trivial reasons of maximising profit. These public values can be contrasted with the ‘deeply held values' of the industry. The latter are the capitalistic values that profit must be maximised at all costs, and that the suffering of animals and the concerns of the public can be sneeringly dismissed providing the industry can make more money. To this end, the factory farming industries have alternatively lobbied, bullied, flattered and cajoled government officials ever since their inhumane practices started to be exposed.

It should be quite clear for scientific, ethical and legal reasons that layer hen cages do not comply with the letter or spirit of the Animal Welfare Act, and must therefore be discontinued as soon as possible.