Europe To Reverse Ban On Caged Laying Hens
August 1, 2005
The European Union will apparently reverse its 1999 mandate to phase out cages for millions of egg-laying chickens. The European Food Safety Authority’s has just completed a five-year study in 20 countries that found eliminating the cages will produce too much additional disease for the chickens, too much risk for humans-and too much cannibalism among the birds.
Thus will end the animal rights movement’s biggest “success” in dictating “better” animal care rules to professional farmers who know and raise the birds and animals.
Such groups as the Vegetarian Society and Compassion in World Farming campaigned for the ban on caged layers. The activists claimed that the chickens weren’t really free to be chickens in cages because they couldn’t scratch in the dirt for worms and weed seeds.
That’s like saying humans—who evolved making overnight nests in trees like the apes or hiding in cold, drafty caves from wolf packs—couldn’t be content in the safety of centrally heated apartments.
The European Food Safety Authority has now confirmed what the farmers already knew: if chickens have good feed, clean water, sanitary conditions, and the company of at least a few other chickens, they will happily lay eggs.
Worse, the animal rights activists failed to realize that the biggest impact of the cages was separating the birds from their own wastes. Just as the introduction of sewage systems cut disease rates in human society, chickens’ disease rates dropped sharply in cages.
When the cages were eliminated, the birds also spread more dangerous bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter on their eggs.
Worst of all, outdoor birds are more likely to spread epidemics of human-dangerous avian influenza and poultry-deadly Newcastle disease contracted from pigeons and other wild birds. They also suffer more energy-sapping parasites such as worms, lice and mites.
Nor did the animal rights activists realize how aggressive chickens can be to each other. The European study found more feather-pecking-and even cannibalism-in outdoor chicken flocks. I see the “pecking order” daily among my free-range chickens. Status skirmishes are the daily occupation of the roosters. Even the hens can’t let a feeding go by without running lower-ranking hens away from the corn at least once. I’ve seen injured birds pecked to death.
Farmers are knowledgeable and careful professionals, who earn their livings by ensuring that their birds and animals are healthy and comfortable—and thus productive.
The activists who claim farm cruelty and carelessness do so because they want us to give up meat, milk, and eggs. They believe we have no right to use domestic animals in support of our own well-being. They want no pigs raised for bacon, no laying chickens fed, and no dairy cows milked. Billions of birds and animal would never live at all.
The historic reality is that humans evolved as meat-eating creatures. Our ancestors hunted and killed animals for food and ate stolen wild birds’ eggs—until we learned to feed and care for livestock on farms. Our children grow taller and learn faster when they get livestock foods. That’s a key reason why there have been few vegetarian societies in history. Even those few—such as the Maya and Aztecs of Central America—had a distressing tendency toward human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Vegetarians should feel free to avoid eating livestock foods—but they should not distort the truth about farmers’ careful management of their birds and animals.
Posted in Commentary |