Dear Friends,

I’m hoping that this document about battery egg production in New Zealand will be forwarded on to everyone in the country who has an e-mail address. When my family or friends meet my newly rescued ex-battery hens, their reaction is always "I never knew it was this bad" or "I had no idea". Because of this lack of knowledge, I am inspired to provide the information first hand.

I have recently rescued my third lot of battery hens; 12 hens this time who were destined to be slaughtered along with the other tens of thousands of hens from the Pukekohe battery farm that week.  The average life for a battery hen is 12-18 months when they are killed and replaced by a new lot of hens.  They are crammed into wire cages - 3 hens per cage, each having a space the size of an A4 piece of paper and the cages are stacked upon each other row upon row in long dark sheds.  When I went to collect the hens from the battery farm the smell was repugnant. As the worker went inside to get the hens, I could see the chicken waste piled 2 foot high underneath the cages.  The worker came outside holding 3 hens upside-down in each hand by their legs and threw them into my boxes. 

Whilst I was driving home one of the hens stuck her head outside the air vents that I had made in the boxes and I noticed that she had no top beak, only a bottom beak and was severely underweight.

A cruel practice that the battery farms carry out is the painful de-beaking of the newly hatched chicks so that they don't cause too much damage to each other when crammed into the cages.  Free-range hens given adequate space would never be forced into such behavioral patterns in the first place. 

When we had completed our journey home I placed the hens into a stable.  This was my first chance to fully assess the state of the hens.  They looked like all the previous hens I had rescued from battery farms: they had severe feather loss and their naked skin was raw and inflamed, their toenails were excessively long and brittle and some nails were growing into the soles of their feet, their combs were very pale indicating severe malnourishment and a lack of vitamin D. Their beaks were in varying states of mutilation and their eyes had none of the brightness of life in them compared to happy, healthy chickens.

The hens also had difficulty walking - they could only take steps up and down and not forwards. Having spent their entire lifetime crammed into a wire cage, they had never had the opportunity to walk or to behave like a normal hen. 

If dogs or cats were treated in this way, the owners would be prosecuted, so why is this treatment of hens allowed in NZ?  Recently the code of welfare for layer hens was actually found to be in breach of the Animal Welfare Act by Parliament's Regulations Review Committee (RRC). The RRC rejected the layer code and made specific recommendations to the Minster of Agriculture in order to address their concerns. The RRC condemned the inappropriate use of the clause ‘exceptional circumstances' that ultimately allowed the continued use of battery cages within the code. The RRC has recommended the code be rewritten and a phase-out of battery cages be introduced. Since the RRC announcement, the Minister of Agriculture Jim Anderton has ignored the recommendations – and instead bows to the pressure of the battery farming industry. Anderton has refused to introduce a phase-out date for cages and continues to hide behind calls for ‘more research’.  This shows the appalling, yet typical, delay tactics being used by a Minister who lacks the courage to do what's right for animal welfare.

Switzerland banned the battery cage in 1992 and under European Union rules, battery cages will be banned from 2012. UK supermarkets including Marks and Spencer, Waitrose and The Co-operative Group no longer sell battery eggs.

Because our minister of Agriculture is refusing to accept the recommendations by the Regulations Review Committee it is up to consumers to play the key role in the welfare of New Zealand's 2.8 million battery hens.  Surely if everyone in NZ knew the truth about battery egg production then public pressure could really play a part in forcing the government to take action.  It’s important that the government comes to realize that consumers are not going to accept such blatant disregard of animal welfare.

Please forward this email on to all of your friends and ask them to forward it on to all of their friends and so on. If everyone stops buying battery eggs and products that contain battery eggs (mayonnaise, aioli, egg quiches, egg pies, egg products from restaurants and cafes, egg pasta, etc) then we can really make a difference.  Through this peaceful and sustained boycott we may be speaking the only language that our minister of agriculture and battery egg farmers understand.

Kindest Regards,
Helen

P.S.  I am happy to report that all the rescued hens in my care are recovering quickly and are having great delight in discovering simple pleasures such as sunshine and green grass – an environment that they deserved in the first place.  Their feathers are growing back and they are learning to run and flap their wings.  For further information, please contact me c/-  NZ Vegetarian Society