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"Hens are as happy in battery farms"

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The headline on the front of today's Sunday Telegraph "Hens are as happy in battery farms" startled me in the supermarket this morning. I looked up the article as soon as I got home:

here it is.

 

Needless to say, a spokesman for the British Egg Information Service, the industry body for egg producers, "welcomed the findings".

 

I would say that hens in battery cages don't experience stress levels because they don't experience anything: they are the living dead.

 

I am sure the article will make those of you who have rescued battery hens very angry -- but even worse, it will give powerful ammunition to battery farmers.

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that is just horrible i wrote them a email saying this:

 

"Iam writing to tell you how discusting i found your artical "Hens are as happy in battery farms" your artical is condoning this cruel and cheap way to rear animals, when clearly the birds are unhappy by the fact they have next to no feathers because of their anxiety and shear bordom. These farmers are happy to put birds at risk of disease and more importantly sacrificing there well-being for their own selfish profit.

You say in your artical that the hens are just as happy in battery cages than outside, if this is true then why is there charitys such as BHWT (battery hen welfare trust) that are rescuing these animals? This clearly means these hens are kept under unbearable conditions and need rescuing.

 

please bear this in mind

 

sincerely"

 

what do you think? bearing in mind iam only 14 i think i done quite well!

can some other people write email to them too, to get the piont across?

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Don't know what to say :(

 

I do....but I know that I would be moderated!

 

All you have to do is reply by posting a picture of a free range hen and a recently rescued battery hen and ask the public at large which one they think looks the most stressed.

 

I have a tiny idea which one they would vote for.

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I think the findings are a little misleading, its not really the point if they are "stressed" or not, as battery hens may not be "stressed" but are not well cared for as in other posts, you only have to look at them to see this......

 

I too will be writing an email to them expressing my concern for their article as they have not done a full comparison of battery vs free range, I think this will mislead consumers into thinking that battery hens are just as well cared for as free range hens........Which is untrue.......

 

I am quite disgusted that a news paper like them have an article like this.

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I think thats the point though, they have reported on something thats not really a good argument......The point that the have similar stress levels, well if they have done a study then that may well be fact. Thats not to say that the chickens are healthy, well looked after, cared for etc etc just that they have similar stress levels......

 

Andy and me was talking about this earlier and they should have done a full comparison with other aspects other than just the levels of corticosterone...........Although it does get a reaction, maybe thats what they wanted, it probably will in fact highlight the plight of these birds even more as the back lash from this kind of story will probably be quite big.........Im not sure many people will believe that they are just as well off being locked in ages all their lives.....

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Well. . .this may be an unpopular point of view, but I think the research has some value.

 

Lobbyists, on both sides of controversial issues, typically trumpet new research findings that they think support their current position, and downplay those that contradict it. Does it therefore follow that the findings are correct or incorrect depending on ones personal views?

 

The welfare of livestock is an important field of research, both economically and morally. Hypotheses regarding 'what is best' for poultry (or any other animal) need to be tested in carefully controlled trials, in order to overcome our in-built biases. Economic bias is easy to understand, but our tendency to project our own feelings onto another animal, is harder to be objective about.

 

I think that, for example, the work of Temple Grandon on the redesign of slaughterhouses, based on the psychology and behaviour of the cattle themselves, or the Scandanavian model (sorry can't recall the plant name) for poultry processing, moves us closer to evidence-based decisions that benefit us all (including the animals concerned).

 

Of course the economic benefits of research findings are easy to measure, they either increase profits or they dont. Harder to quantify are the ethical benefits, but again I think that reliable evidence, and the willingness to modify our views as facts emerge, gets us further in the ethical debate than polemic.

 

Again, the work on slaughterhouses has uncovered quantifiable ethical benefits - measurable effects on the workers involved (such as staff retention rates) that can truly advance our understanding of the importance of evidence-based ethical treatment of livestock. While such measurable effects are necessarily very limited, they can inform the larger ethical debate,(for example, how unnecessary cruelty undermines the humanity of us all) in a way that is hard to dismiss as 'sentimentalism'.

 

I do not know whether this particular study has been conducted well or not - peer review & reproduction of the results by other investigators will establish that.

 

I do know that, of course, the newspaper concerned wants to fan the flames of controversy - polemic sells papers.

 

My own position remains promoting care of livestock that enhances the quality of their lives to the greatest degree possible. I believe that the ethical treatment of the animals in our care encourages wide-spread positive effects in our human societies also.

 

Obviously, a study of the levels of corticosterone found in eggs from battery-cages vs free-range, is only a very small piece of evidence in the necessary debate over the best way to keep poultry. My point is that deciding whether the findings are accurate or not, based on ones current position in the wider debate, is not helpful. Encouraging further research into measurable effects on poultry (& humans), of different methods of livestock management, is.

 

How this small piece of evidence (if confirmed) fits into the larger body of research & how it will affect the moral debate remains to be seen. The sound-bites of lobbyists in response to its publication, may turn around & bite them back. For example, maybe these findings will confirm future research that points more strongly to the desirability of free-ranging poultry. Would that affect how 'correct' you think the findings are?

 

Again, my own position stands four-square on the side of an end to battery cages and for the promotion of compassion & dignity for chickens including an environment that allows them to scratch about in the dirt, interact with other chickens etc, etc , whether in a poultry farm or a backyard. But I want to base that on evidence from the animal itself, not on my emotional reactions alone.

 

I am not addressing the grand-standing of the British Egg Information Service, as quoted in the article, or the predictable superficial coverage by the Sunday Telegraph in reducing a complex issue to a yes/no, he said/she said sound-bite that moves the discussion forward not one iota.

 

Sorry for a long (probably tedious!) post. Hope I don't come across as hectoring or tendentious. I dont mean to. Its just that when I have a strong emotional reaction to research findings like these, it sends up a red flag for me. I want to investigate the hidden assumptions that are probably provoking my emotional response. Not that emotional responses dont have a place - they do. I just want it to be an examined emotional response. Thanks for the opportunity to get that off my chest.

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Not getting emotional here but,.....

 

look at a rescued battery hen, look at it again three weeks later, then three weeks after that, do you need to ask when it was happiest?

 

don't think so.

 

That also applies if the hen died shortly after being rescued.

 

Sometimes journalists are more retarded than politicians! :roll:

 

Kev.

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:evil: (by the way, well done xChicken04x, don't think I could have written that at 14!) It's good to hear some of the background to the research ... all I would say is, take a battery produced egg, and a free-range egg (not necessarily from an Eglu-housed hen) - see the difference, and taste the difference as well.
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Thanks Sarah and everyone for their comments. I've passed it on to BHWT via Lisa as Jane still has no internet thanks to BT :x I also have a meeting with Jane today so will make sure she knows about it.

 

It's misleading as it's a welfare issue. A hen in a cage cannot carry out it's instinctive behaviour. Anyone with their own hens and ex batteries knows this is fact. No matter where a hen is they will find situations stressful, as we all do. Waste of paper really.

 

BBx :)

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Ooh that has made me soooo angry. How can these people say that battery hens don't have stresses. They live their "life" in a cage and have space no bigger than an A4 size piece of paper, what sort a life is that for anyone let alone a chicken. I agree with Couperwife, make them spend a few years in a 6ft x 6ft cell and see how they get on. AARRRGGHHH. :wall:

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that is just horrible i wrote them a email saying this:

 

"Iam writing to tell you how discusting i found your artical "Hens are as happy in battery farms" your artical is condoning this cruel and cheap way to rear animals, when clearly the birds are unhappy by the fact they have next to no feathers because of their anxiety and shear bordom. These farmers are happy to put birds at risk of disease and more importantly sacrificing there well-being for their own selfish profit.

You say in your artical that the hens are just as happy in battery cages than outside, if this is true then why is there charitys such as BHWT (battery hen welfare trust) that are rescuing these animals? This clearly means these hens are kept under unbearable conditions and need rescuing.

 

please bear this in mind

 

sincerely"

 

what do you think? bearing in mind iam only 14 i think i done quite well!

can some other people write email to them too, to get the piont across?

 

I think this is very well put and I will definately be writing to them, thanks.

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Shrimp has told me she was very unhappy in the battery farm!

 

RescueDay20thMay07010.jpg

I think Shrimp should send her picture to the Telegraph and tell the 'nice' reporter there all about her experiences.

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This is a fascinating thread. I have issues with research that seems to have based all its assumptions on the levels of a hormone (corticosterone) within the egg and has left the hen out of the equation. By the same token would women who came out of the concentration camps and went on to have well-adjusted mentally stable children be deemed not to have suffered?

Also could we have some transparency about who funded this research...

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