Excellent news for the compassionate eater - the long-fought-for ban on battery cages came into effect on January 1st 2012. I remember joining the battery hen welfare trust back in 2005 when we were still campaigning for mainstream shops to convert to selling free range eggs; I think the Co-operative were (unsurprisingly) the first, and then Hellman's mayonnaise converted and the whole thing went mainstream. Thank you Hellman's!
It makes me happy to think that hens will now be kept in slightly better conditions. As with anything like this, there will be farmers who look after their animals brilliantly and don't require this sort of legislation, but there will be the few who do not - and their animals can have better lives now.
Of course it seems to be a mixed blessing - where will all the hens go? How can we be sure that dodgy eggs don't make their way into processed foods? But I think that the legislation will make a huge difference to chicken welfare - how could it not? McDonald's would not be proclaiming their free range eggs if people weren't aware of the issues.
At first I (selfishly) thought that meant I wouldn't be able to re-home a battery hen, but then, sadly, I realised that there will still be plenty of hens to re-home, as they're disposed of when they're past their productive peak.
Read more about it here.
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