Many of the farms visited may be meeting the requirements of the EU Laying Hens Directive, but in adopting the ‘enriched’ cage they are all failing to address the welfare needs of their animals.

The industry heralds these cages as making vast improvements on the banned barren battery cages. But it’s clear that for the hens a cage is still a cage.

Investigator

Everywhere our team went, they encountered many hens with their beaks severely trimmed and their bodies badly feather-pecked, particularly around the chest and neck. Often, hens appeared to be anxious and fearful of human contact – while others were too ill to move.

There was no space for them to escape the pecking. How can there be when you’re stuck between wire walls and you share the small cage with nine other animals?

Investigator

In almost every farm, the conditions inside the cages were so cramped that hens were barely able to spread their wings. In some farms the perches, which are meant to simulate a tree branch for roosting, were barely a few centimetres off the ground. In other cases, if a hen was on a perch, she could not stand upright because the roof of the cage was so low. What is more, the cages were so crowded that when a hen did manage to get onto a perch there was no possibility of normal roosting behaviour.

This system is fundamentally flawed

She told me they were suffering; not just a few but all of them – thousands of birds infested with mites. They weren’t getting any treatment. Deemed not worth spending money on as they’d soon be in a soup, paste or pet food.

Investigator

The Investigation Unit saw farms of all types: small and large, modern and ramshackle, clean and dirty. Regardless of the operation, the hens were closely confined, spent their entire lives standing on wire mesh floors or slippery perches, and never saw sunlight.

Some birds were perching. This ‘luxury’ is one of the defining factors that makes these cages legal. But the hens simply stepped up an inch or two from the floor of the cage onto the perch and spent their time being jostled by all the other hens around them.

Investigator

The ‘enriched’ cage may be within the letter of the law. But it is certainly not within the spirit of our campaign to ban the barren battery cage.

Caged farming investigations