• Home
• Cruelty
• Animals on Farms
• Experimentation
• Wildlife
• Sport and Entertainment
• Nutrition
• Recipes
• Animal Law
• Eating Wildlife
• Meat and the Environment
• Cruelty Free Products
• Vegetarian Restaurants

• Things to do
• School activities
• About us
• Contacts us
• Membership
• Mail us
• Links
• Credits

Web

animalliberation.org.au

• Battery Hens
• Pigs
• Dairy
• Chickens
• Live Sheep Export
• Adelaide Free Range Egg Outlets
• Compassionate Recipes
• Companion Animals
• About Animal Liberation
• Product Testing on Animals
• Can greenies eat meat?
• Cattle methane
• Milking the Murray
• The real cost of chicken
• CSIRO's Cancer Diet
• Eating Water
• Eating Plants

• Greenhouse Gases
• Water Usage Quiz
• Bush Tucker
• Climate Change

• New South Wales
• Queensland
• Victoria
• Tasmania
• Animals Australia

Opinions

Public and legal opinions about battery cages

In a 1994 public opinion survey carried out by the independent company AGB McNair on behalf of Animal Liberation (Vic), 66% of people believed that battery cages were unacceptable.

In another survey carried out by People Data (Aust) Pty Ltd in 1998 on behalf of Animals Australia:

• 65.1% of people agreed that there should be a ban on keeping hens in cages too small to stretch their wings.

• Overall 79.1% were concerned about battery cages, with 54.1% "very concerned" and 25% "somewhat concerned" that battery hens do not have the freedom to move around, stretch their wings, and lay their eggs in a nest.

In both surveys there was also evidence that consumers are being misled by the packaging of eggs. Many think when they buy brands such as "Farm Fresh" that the hens are free to roam, whereas in fact they are in battery cages.

The public concern about battery cages is also shared by some judges. When Magistrate Philip Wright found Golden Egg farm guilty of 7 counts of cruelty to hens in February 1993, he said:
" Confinement such as to cause those results could not be called other than cruel in my opinion: if a bird is unable to move without affecting physically others in the cage, nor to lay or rest without affecting itself deleteriously, the cruelty is constant and continual and without relief and, I have no doubt, caused stress in all these birds. "

Commenting on the condition of hens removed from Parkwood Eggs, Magistrate Michael Ward said in February 1997:
" The freedom to move (stretch, flap, ruffle feathers, preen and scratch) are all basic behavioural instincts of poultry; freedom from fractures (a physiological need), freedom to peck for food; freedom from pecking; freedom from the pain of debeaking; the right to own a beak; the right to scratch; freedom from claw and foot damage; freedom to dust bathe are all basic behavioural or physiological needs. ... the hens are kept in conditions so bad, that they are useless and put down after little more than one year in the cages, after about one third of the normal life span of a hen. This is a good measure of the savagery of the system. "

In the McLibel case in the UK, where McDonalds took 2 of its critics to court, Chief Justice Bell stated in his judgement:
" Laying hens which are used to produce eggs for [McDonalds] spend their whole lives in battery cages without access to open air or sunlight and without freedom of movement. I do not find the lack of open air or sunlight to be cruel, but the severe restriction of movement is cruel and [McDonalds] are culpably responsible for that cruel practice."

For more information about the McLibel case, go to McSpotlight .

In spite of such comments by magistrates, and graphic video footage obtained by animal liberationists, no egg farmer in Australia has been prosecuted for cruelty to date (November 1999).