Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry
Submission
to the draft Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry
My
main interest and concern is the question of whether hens should continue to be
kept in cages as a means of producing eggs.
Much is made of various trials run to discover
poultry preferences as to the type of housing the birds innately prefer. These trials are highly suspect. I refer to the story produced by the BBC of
Great Britain where much of the anti-cage rhetoric arises and seeks to be
backed up by suitable science based trials.
Recent work by scientists shows that two
thirds of the results of scientific papers particularly as it related to animal
trials cannot be reproduced when redone by other scientists. One must then decide which section does the
information fall into – the suspect two thirds or the results that are
reproducible. The correct course to take
would be to only accept those results which have been independently reproduced
by a disinterested third party. For this
reason most of the references quoted by the RSPCA would need to be discounted.
I
believe my opinion and farmers of a similar nature which is based on many years
firsthand experience handling poultry on a daily basis should rank equal to
scientists whose results in two thirds of their work can’t be reproduced by
other scientists.
I’ll
confine my arguments to the reasons I think hens should be allowed to be
confined in houses ( commonly called
cages )within a climate controlled shed and then a list of the disadvantages of
production using hens as free range or barn.
Hens in houses or cages within a shed are
restricted in the amount of area they can move around in. Hens move around because they are looking for
food or shelter. When food is available
without effort 24 hours a day the need and the desire to run around is mostly
removed. My experience was that when a
hen accidently found its way out of the cage if the door was left open it would
often get back in unless it could find food and water elsewhere.
Hens
weren’t interested in leaving their fellow hens. They didn’t head into the bush to become “free
range “. In spite of 200 years of
colonization no feral populations of free range hens exist in mainland Australia.
Farmers are concerned about profit, the
welfare of their animals and remaining viable. The short term super profits
that have been available to free range operators thanks to free advertising
provided by the RSPCA and others has distorted the market, pulling many
into operating “free range” and some unfortunately into breaking the law
in describing their egg production methods.
The
“super profit” cycle has ended with a crash so this Pull mechanism is
ended. Now is a good time to examine the
pros and cons of the various production methods without the distortion of the
profit motive.
Taking a long term view the climate is in the
process of getting warmer on average.
This means the number of days outside the survivable temperature range
for hens is increasing and the temperature reading for the hottest day of the
year is also increasing. Temperatures
that can cause wild birds to drop out of the sky will not be abnormal. Hens kept in houses can be cooled effectively
and back up electrical generators will be available to ensure hen welfare. Hens in individual houses or cages are evenly
spread throughout the building making cooling easier and more effective.
While the climate is getting hotter it is also
subject to extremes of rainfall with recent incidences of flooding affecting
free range operations. Free range farms
are often located on flood plains due to the presence of good soil and water.
Housed Hens lay more eggs on average – there
are no scientific arguments on that statistic.
They do so because stress and competition has been removed.
Hen Housed Egg Production must be related to
hen welfare and to argue otherwise defies logic.
Each individual hen can be easily checked daily. The amount of food eaten in a 24 hour period
can be measured particularly in larger operations where individual costs per
hen housed are lower. This allows a
quick response to any drop which is often a sign of disease, stress or water
restriction. Alarms can be installed to
further help hen welfare.
Very importantly manure can be collected
efficiently and used to help power the farm in a carbon friendly manner or used
to create organic fertilizer. This is
important as phosphorous becomes more expensive with “peak phosphorus” being
predicted around the world as we use up available known reserves. In addition Nitrogen is a pollutant of
waterways, aquifers and water supplies especially in country areas and of
course a stress factor in the Great Barrier Reef die off.
Many diseases are prevented by the use of
cages which breaks the oral - faecal
cycle and no doubt much will be made of this by others more qualified than myself. Suffice to say that without breaking that
cycle the level of husbandry required to keep the hens healthy and producing is
much higher with very little room for error.
The nature of hens is to socialize in small
groups of a cockerel and a few hens.
Thus the cage system more closely resembles their natural
situation. A pecking order is easily and
quickly established and they get on with the business of producing eggs in a
stress free environment. Without the
cockerel present there is even less stress on the hens.
Much is made of the “five freedoms” while
little is made of the sixth freedom.
Freedom
from anthropomorphism!
Anthropomorphism
as it relates to hens reached its peak in Australia in the form of a television
campaign where a television personality spoke lovingly about his “lady” sitting
on the arm rest of his lounge chair - The lady being a rather nonplussed
looking laying hen. This is an example
of the unrealistic and emotive picture put out by those putting the case for
hens to be only managed as “free range”
Was the viewer expected to buy eggs from hens kept in the lounge room –
the next step in the humanization of the chicken species.
It’s
important that decisions on hen welfare not be based on humanizing the gallus gallus domesticus species and policy
makers be prepared to “cop the flake” from the emotional fringe using arguments
based on the reality of the hens true welfare as a “working” animal free from
pain and stress.
Examples
of well intentioned policy changes that resulted in more grief than they sought
to alleviate are the policy to ban live cattle exports rather than fix the
problems and the close down of the grey hound industry due to some players bad
actions.
What
are the disadvantages of banning cage egg production?
Banning would remove a major source of
possible innovation that allows the full expression of genetic improvements
being presently bred into the species.
Caged
or housed egg production is but one method of egg production in a suite of
methods. This variety of methods
provides some resilience to the production model. When one system is under challenge such as a
virulent strain of Avian flu being
actively spread by wild birds then the housed population would provide egg
production to keep the industry viable and take the pressure off requests for
imported eggs.
Banning caged egg production would mean egg
production would gravitate to areas of mild climate increasing transport costs
and concentrating production in these areas.
Costs would be higher overall due to land
requirements, higher labour needs and greater feed and cost of mortalities.
Most cases of Salmonella poisoning arise from
free range farms due to the difficulty of keeping eggs clean.
Disease from contact with wild birds is more
likely.
The chance of high mortality due to predators
with subsequent stress to the remaining hens is a factor.
Chickens
are mono gastric and have no digestive facilities to get their protein and
energy from grass. Hens naturally peck
and when grass is on offer they ingest it resulting in gizzards packed with
grass resulting in death. They normally
eat high protein insects and seeds when in productive lay.
Sheds
which open to fields can’t be proofed against rats and mice so continuous
poisoning has to be done resulting in
the local populations of owls and raptors also being poisoned and becoming
locally extinct.
Thanking
you for the opportunity to express my opinion on this vital subject.
