Today millions of laying hens still suffer as a result of being confined in inhumane housing systems known as battery cages.
Common sense is enough to tell us that birds kept in this way are subjected to undue suffering -- with just 400 square centimeters of space each, battery hens barely have enough room to turn around.
Housing systems must be adapted as far as possible to the livestock, not the livestock to the housing systems.
In 1981, the Swiss Animal Protection Act came into effect, making Switzerland the first country in the world to ban battery cages. The law requires housing systems for laying hens to provide sheltered, darkened nesting boxes and perches or slatted grids for all hens and allow a minimum area of 800 square centimeters per bird. This requirement effectively prohibits keeping laying hens in cages. Swiss poultry keepers have accepted the new situation and have demonstrated that it is possible to make a profit by using more humane husbandry.
The method of choice in Switzerland is now the aviary. This system is conceived in accordance with the natural behavior of fowl and is based on installations and equipment such as nest boxes and scratching areas or perches that enable birds to follow patterns of behavior specific to their species.
A free-range system offering chickens a choice
between large indoor and outdoor runs.
Despite the success of the Swiss system, millions of dollars are still being spent around the world on research into the needs of laying hens. Scientists are neglecting the progress that has been made in Switzerland over the last 30 years. Hygienic measures, behavioral aspects and economic problems are being studied over again. Thirteen years ago, the Swiss poultry farmers were presented with a major challenge. They faced up to this challenge and have now successfully mastered it. There is no logical reason why poultry farmers in other countries should not be at least as successful in the same situation.
The Swiss Society for the Protection of Animals (STS) has produced a 32 page, color report entitled Laying Hens: 12 years of experience with new husbandry systems in Switzerland, on which the above is based. For copies of the complete publication contact the STS, Zentralsekretariat, CH-4052 Basel, Birsfelderstrasse 45, SWITZERLAND.
AWI Quarterly Winter 1995, Volume 44, Number 1, p.10
On February 24, 1993, Tasmanian Magistrate, Phillip Wright, ruled that confinement of hens in battery cages is cruel. The case was brought against Golden Egg Farms Pty. Ltd. by Pam Clarke, who has been working for over a decade to outlaw battery hen fanning in Australia.
Magistrate Wright commented that "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."
The judge noted that the only explanation for such suffering is increased profitability of egg production. Wright said that it is his "strong view that all these birds have been treated with unjustified and unnecessary cruelty, constituted by great indifference to their suffering and pain."
AWI Quarterly Summer 1993, Volume 42, Number 3, p.12