Key welfare issues

Battery cages
We are very concerned about the keeping of any farm animals in restrictive cage systems. Scientific research has shown that the space in a conventional barren battery cage is not enough. Hens cannot properly stretch or flap their wings, exercise, turn around easily or move away from other birds when they want to. 

The conventional battery cage does also not allow birds to perch, dustbathe or lay eggs in a separate nest. Research indicates that preventing hens from performing these important natural behaviours can cause frustration and suffering.

The major shortfalls in the cage system can also lead to a number of related welfare problems including:

• severe restriction on movement leading to fragile bones
   
• severe restriction on most normal behaviours leading to frustration and abnormal behaviours
   
• inability to escape aggression from other birds if this occurs
   
• damage to the feet from standing on the thin wire sloping floor.
   

Conventional battery cages will be banned throughout Europe from 2012. However, it will remain legal to keep hens in so-called ‘enriched’ cages, which still severely restrict their movement and do not properly cater for the birds’ behavioural or physical needs. For example, research has shown that the scratching area provided in these cages does not allow the birds to properly perform foraging or dustbathing behaviours.

Higher welfare alternative systems (barn and free-range) require more skill to operate but, when properly managed, they can provide much higher standards of welfare compared with cages. Well-designed systems, with perches, nest boxes and floor litter for scratching, foraging and dustbathing, allow hens to perform natural behaviours and move freely around the building and, in the case of free-range, access the outside.

Feather pecking
Feather pecking is another laying hen welfare issue that we are very concerned about. This is where hens begin to investigate, peck and pull at the feathers of other hens, sometimes leading to more serious injuries and even cannibalism. Unfortunately it can affect hens in any system (cages and alternative) and outbreaks can suddenly occur.

The possible reasons for this behaviour can vary widely, but include environment, breed, nutrition, diseases, the way they were reared as pullets (before hens start laying eggs, when they are typically housed on a different farm) and sudden changes in things such as their feed or environment.

Beak trimming, or ‘tipping’, is often carried out when the hens are chicks to reduce the risk of feather pecking injuries in later life. Where beak trimming is carried out the law states it must be done before the birds are 10 days old and not more than one third of the beak can be removed. This practice is due to be banned from 2011.

We’re working in lots of different ways to try to improve the conditions in which all laying hens are reared, transported and slaughtered/killed.