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Citizens in New Zealand are calling for an end to controversial colony cages on chicken farms across the country.
An online petition was launched to stamp out the system as campaigners claim it leads to ‘severe overcrowding’.
Colony cages
Whilst battery cages will be made illegal in the region next year, colony cages will remain in place.
Within each cage, up to 80 hens are compacted together – with the space of just an A4 piece of paper.
‘In New Zealand, over 1.2 million hens are not afforded these basic freedoms because they are intensively farmed in colony cages…
‘It’s time for our politicians to put the chicken before the egg and make the unacceptable practice of caging hens in New Zealand illegal’, the petition reads.
The animal advocacy charity SAFE is urging Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor to instate a ban. So far, the petition has garnered just over 1,000 signatures ahead of its 100,000 goal.
Moreover, campaigners claim it goes against the country’s Welfare act that requires the physical health and behavioral needs of animals to be met.
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Europe’s cage ban
Currently, the cages are either banned or being phased out in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, and Slovakia.
Moreover, in eight US states the production and sale of cage eggs has also been banned.
Cages on European farms is set to be banned by 2027. This was announced earlier this month.
The move will affect the lives of 300 million farmed animals following the European Commission’s decision.
SAFE is taking its petition to the New Zealand parliament next March.
