My views on the Australian Poultry Code review …

https://www.facebook.com/AnimalsAustralia/photos/a.107448345298.115177.32799215298/10157222318010299/?type=3&theater

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute my views regarding the Australian Poultry Code review.

I join well over 117,000 Australians – and counting, in one organisation alone, who are telling our governments to ban battery cages.

This new legal review of the code has been written 16 years* after the last one and, unbelievably, there is still no mention of even a phase out of battery cages!

This is despite a new, and damning Victorian government-commissioned, independent scientific study by leading international experts, that has categorically concluded what most of us have long-known to be true – that battery cages are cruel!

This is the same evidence that has led the governments of New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and the entire European Union to conclude that battery cages should be banned. Major companies, including retail, hotel, and restaurant chains around the world, including Australia, have switched, or are switching to cage free eggs.

In Australia, if you treated a cat or dog this way, it would be a criminal offence. The only difference is that one is a food animal, the other a companion animal. And yet hens are equally sentient, and equally deserving of our protection from cruelty.

Millions of hens have suffered extreme cruelty in cages throughout the 16 years since the last review. But the government departments responsible for animal agriculture, are charged with representing both the interests of the industry AND the welfare of the animals. If they had prioritised their animal welfare obligations, the cages would have been banned in 2002.

How many more millions of hens must suffer before Governments abide by their own rules, listen to science and the people?

I urge Animal Health Australia to now act on the evidence in the study and, at the very least, support a ban on battery cages in the draft standards, and an end to standard industry mutilation practices, such as beak trimming and the maceration of male chicks.

I further urge that slaughterhouses ensure all birds are humanely killed before being plunged into the scalder:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-16/chickens-boiled-alive-inside-melbourne-abattoir/9157186

And that the Guidelines include measures to ensure no collusion, and/or any conflict of interest between the poultry industry and government departments responsible for poultry agriculture:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/egg-farmers-accused-of-colluding-with-nsw-government/9229242
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-08/concerns-poultry-welfare-standards-stage-managed-by-industry/9299256

Australia is lagging well behind international standards when it comes to our treatment of hens. But in 2018, there is an opportunity for progress.

Yours faithfully,
Cheryl Forrest-Smith

* Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines, Nov 2017

Further references and background information:

Companies switching (or have switched) to cage free:

“Unilever” – was the first food giant to announce a big switch to cage-free eggs, saying all 350 million eggs it uses annually in the US to make mayonnaise would come from free-ranging hens. (AA 2014)

“Compass Group” – The largest food service company in the world, with food outlets in 45 countries, including Australia (AA 2016)

Australian egg farm housing trails the rest of the world’s. Australian-type cages are banned in the European Union and are being phased out in several other countries, notably India. New Zealand will end cages by 2022. Major European chains such as Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Aldi have stopped stocking cage eggs, and in the US, where battery cages are still legal, some of the biggest names, from hotel chains to Sara Lee, Kraft, Nestlé (Globally), are committed to phasing out cage eggs. In 2010, Unilever was the first food giant to announce a big switch to cage-free eggs, saying all 350 million eggs it uses annually in the US to make mayonnaise would come from free-ranging hens. Restaurant chains Burger King, Wendy’s, Denny’s and Subway are all moving to free-range eggs. Across the UK and Europe, McDonald’s uses only free-range eggs.

McDonalds Australia announced in 2014, that it would phase out cage eggs. (AA 2014), Subway, Hungry Jacks, …….

7 major supermarket chains, including Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, IGA
Cheryl Forrest-Smith