Published 14/10/2011

Compassion in World Farming has released a hard-hitting web video to coincide with British Egg Week and World Egg Day (Friday 14th October) asking people to put themselves in the place of caged creatures.

The egg industry's celebration of their product has provided the opportunity for the animal welfare charity to highlight the cruelty of cages in farming, particularly the barren battery cages that will be illegal across the EU come 1st January 2012.

Frank Tamburin, whose company Channel 33 donated its time and resources to the project, said: "I knew about Compassion's The Big Move campaign on battery cages and offered my company's skills to help further awareness in an intuitive and hopefully compelling way. We wanted the video to be shocking enough to make people think about the issues, and abstract enough that they will want to find out more."

Joyce D'Silva, Director of Public Affairs at Compassion, said: "A number of major EU nations are still not ready for the ban on cruel battery cages although they've had more than 12 years to prepare.  We're hoping this video will prompt people to join our campaign at www.ciwf.org."

UK farmers have made the necessary changes and invested the money to make sure they are ready come 2012.

Compassion is calling on the European Commission to properly enforce the new EU Directive but the film is also a call for an end to cages in egg production. The EU rules still allow for bigger "enriched" cages to be used.

Take action

• After watching the video, you can go to http://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/egg-laying-hens/ to take action.