Egg industry refuses to respond to animal activists’ footage
Australia’s egg industry has refused to respond to disturbing footage showing dead and dying hens at Victorian free-range farms, with members told to stay silent.
The Australian egg industry has closed ranks, refusing to respond to animal activists’ campaign footage of dead and dying hens in free-range and barn-based systems.
The Farm Transparency Project’s campaign footage from seven Victorian cage-free farms shows hens crowded into sheds at night on perches covered in faeces, with many missing feathers and carrying open wounds, while some lie dying next to the cannibalised carcasses of others.
The campaign website states: “No matter the label, there is no such thing as an ethical egg” and tells consumers “the best thing you can do to help hens is to stop buying eggs”.
Campaigner Harley McDonald-Eckersall said “when the public see images of free-roaming hens in grassy paddocks, they would never imagine the cramped nightmare inside free-range sheds, where sick and dying hens suffer to produce so-called ‘high-welfare’ eggs”.
But rather than responding to the activists’ campaign the egg industry has closed ranks, with members told not to comment.
One key industry leader said “we’ve been told we’re not allowed to say anything”.
The peak industry body Australian Eggs chief executive Rowan McMonnies and his media officer Kelly Seagrave failed to respond to email, calls and texts asking for a response.
However caged-egg producer and former Victorian Farmers Federation president Tony Nesci said consumers and the supermarket majors – Coles, Woolworths and Aldi - needed to view the videos “to see where their food comes from”.
“They (supermarket) give free-range eggs pride of place, while putting our caged eggs on the bottom shelf,” Mr Nesci said.
“I’ve got nothing against free range,” he said. “It has a place, but in very small numbers.”
Caged egg producers have long argued their birds are less stressed, exposed to fewer diseases and predation as well as being housed in controlled temperature sheds.
Australia’s top avian veterinarian Peter Scott has previously stated that “both systems (caged and free-range) have their pros and cons.
“In cages there’s no way you can resolve behavioural conditions,” but when it comes to disease, Dr Scott said “for every gram of antibiotic I use in caged systems, I would use 100 grams in alternative systems”.
Mortality rates in free-range systems range from 7 to 14 per cent and every one of the avian influenza outbreaks to hit Australia since 2012 started when free-range poultry picked up the virus from wild birds, according to state government incident reports.
