For the first time in 15 years, the draft Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry are available for public comment until 26 February and Australia’s poultry needs your help!
Please take just 1 minute to complete the form below to lodge your submission to government, bringing our poultry industry out of the dark ages and into the modern era. We’ll also send copies to all key federal and state decision makers.
In their current form the standards are a national embarrassment that have ignored all the latest animal welfare science. The number one concern is that they still permit the use of battery cages where hens cannot even spread their wings. Imagine spending your entire life unable to spread your arms.
The draft standards are shockingly sub-standard on every level and their outcome will affect the lives of approximately 600 million birds. They deny poultry of their most basic needs such as perching, dust-bathing, foraging, nesting, or even access to sunlight. Ducks are even denied water in which to swim.
A massive 84% of Australians want to see an end to caged eggs according to recent RSPCA research—we need you to make your voice heard!
Australian supermarkets have listened to their customers—both Coles and Woolworths will not use caged eggs in their home brand products. And global giant Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, has announced a complete transition to cage-free eggs.
So why is the Australian Government trying to lock in cruelty for the next decade by proposing these appalling standards? An exposé by ABC’s 7.30 program suggested that the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI) had been colluding with egg farmers to prevent battery cages from being outlawed. They revealed that NSW bureaucrats secretly met with the Department to discuss how to manipulate the process and retain the use of battery cages. Coincidentally, NSW is the largest producer of caged eggs in the country and coordinating the national standard setting process.
We need to turn this around and make our voices heard – it’s time to can the cage!
We must CAN THE CAGE and give Aussie birds a life worth living.
Their future is in your hands.
The deadline for this TAKE ACTION has now closed. Please click here to see what other actions you can take for animals.
Perhaps your campaign should take the issue to people as they put the chicken in their mouth?
Asking how you’d like to live in a cage is a question that may induce a guilty conscience, but it is a poor strategy and people will dismiss it.
Ask them if they want to eat the unhealthy drugged bird and maybe they will think twice?
In many ways that’s true, but a tiny improvement will make a huge difference to billions of birds annually. Every tiny step is a step in the right direction. These campaigns, too, help inform people. Someone may have just started on their journey into the realisation of just how truly horrific it is for farm animals worldwide, just as you and I did. Most definitely we want every person to find themselves where you are now.
Let the world be a better place for animals, may everyone be as kind as yourself ⚖️🌏
This is inhuman way to treat any birds they should have room to move.all animals have feelings.
SICK SOCIETY
Lets be a grown up country and show respect for our Australian animals.
Ban the cage.
Please help to legislate phasing out caged poultry farming in Australia.
Thank you.
Please ban battery cages. Hens should be free to roam, scratch the ground, flap their wings and feel the sun-all natural behaviours that they are deprived of when kept in cages.
Can the cage Now
Stop the cruelty, let hens roam.
In this year of 2018 it is about time that we no longer have hen battery cages for egg production. It is inhumane treatment of the hens in which they suffer and cannot exhibit their normal behaviour. Also the slaughtering process needs to be more humane as hens are slaughtered for meat once they no longer produce eggs unless they are rescued and live out their lives in appropriate environment. I only use free range eggs and do not eat chicken.
Please give us a life worth living
Yes, Christine. I also only eat free range eggs and do not eat chicken.
To those who continue to support inhumane standards, or are not even aware of where their chicken meal comes from, and probably don’t care, it is never too late to change your habits.
Be aware, care. Just do it.
Sandra Frazer
I am so disappointed that our State and Federal Governments are ignoring the wishes of the public to keep corporates happy with their profits at the expense of the life of so many farm animals. Here’s hoping Barnaby Joyce steps down soon because he is one of the worst when it comes to caring about animal welfare before money.
Chickens are extremely smart, social, sensitive animals who deserve a much better life than this. let them live the life they were meant to live to roam freely .
Let’s encourage our friends too to take action to end battery cages, if we can all work to achieve this in our lifetime that would be a great achievement for Australians. Thank you.
Stop the cruelty now and ban the cage
STOP ALL ANIAL ABUSE IN ANY KIND OR WAY **WORLD WIDE
Stop the cruelty. Let hens roam!
It is unbelievable this caging still goes on – how embarrassed we should be as a nation to be treating our defenseless animals in such a way. Can the cage NOW!
Every creature has the right to freedom from pain, suffering and misery in confinement. I will NEVER support any industry responsible for the sickening exploitation of animal welfare. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME to those who have been perpetuated this cruelty or condoned it through legislation.
I am vegetarian so any form of slaughter for human consumption is abhorrent to me.
Circulated print & broadcast media Friday: Reported collusion & systemic corruption to maintain extreme cruelty by the egg industry, and the NSW DPI. And yet, the federal government has given it to this government to lead the national review.
West Australian, Victorian, and South Australian governments have registered their concerns, along with the RSPCA and the AVA. Prof Thomas Clarke, Corporate Governance Research Centre, Sydney, said the Premier needs to look at what the DPI is doing, and Animals Australia has lodged a complaint with ICAC.
Public consultation, via submissions and a separate survey, closes next Monday, 5.00pm. It’s 16 years since the last poultry code review – Might be the last chance for at least another 10 years.
However, as of this morning, nearly 131,000 caring people have now sent submissions to Animal Health Australia, calling for an end to battery cage cruelty. It is unprecedented – Triple the number of previous submissions to help farm animals. Thousands more are flooding in daily, and the poultry industry is worried.
This is a critical opportunity to save millions of hens from extreme suffering, and it also draws attention to a ludicrous conflict of interest, where the same government departments are responsible for both the interests of the animal agriculture industry AND the welfare of farm animals. We must have an Independent Office of Animal Welfare (IOAW).
I urge you to please give this the wide, mainstream attention it deserves. Community awareness is priceless.
I attached my submission, plus 2 photos. Can only provide text here:
1 “A (battery) hen’s bones could become so weak that her spine disintegrates, & she becomes paralysed. – Elise Burgess, Voiceless
Animals Australia · 1 hr · (Friday, February 23, 2018, 11.47am)
http://www.AnimalsAus.org/t3H
– To counter industry argument that hens are better off in cages.
2 They called it ‘state of the art’ — but these are the lives led by ‘forgotten’ hens trapped inside this ‘Egg Corp Assured’ PACE factory farm, NSW.
Here, dozens of abandoned hens were found ‘living’ among enormous towers of rotting faeces — surviving on scraps, beetles and eggs (beneath the cages). – Animals Australia , August 21, 2014
– To counter industry argument that free range is too great a biosecurity risk.
Time to ditch ALL cages….barbaric industry
