☛ Want to stay up to date with the news? Sign up to our daily bulletin. Some supermarkets are limiting purchases of eggs, the broadcaster added. It has also urged New Zealanders not to respond to the nationwide egg shortage by buying chickens, as the birds can live for more than a decade but may only provide eggs for a year or two.Ī shortage of eggs is affecting bakers making popular New Zealand desserts such as pavlova – a meringue-based dessert made largely out of egg whites, according to the BBC. “Banning battery cages while allowing colony cages simply is not good enough for hens, or the farmers,” said the SPCA. On average, each caged laying hen is afforded only 67 square inches of cage spaceless space than a single sheet of letter-sized paper on which to live her entire life. Consumers have been increasingly interested in moving toward cage-free egg production systems, yet 70 percent of laying hens still spend their lives in. The charity is urging the government to ban colony cages and says the practice was allowed to continue due to industry lobbying, despite consumers not supporting the caging of hens. The vast majority of egg-laying hens in the United States are confined in battery cages. Hens kept in these cages cannot properly dust bathe, range or forage, which hens are naturally driven to do,” said the SPCA. “This is just a bit larger than an A4 sheet of paper. Like battery cages, colony cages are stacked on top of each other and give each chicken only 750 sq cm. While colony cages, which typically house 60 chickens, are larger than battery cages, birds are living in cramped conditions and unable to display normal behaviour. However despite the ban, the charity said many birds were still suffering in different types of cages. Browse Getty Images premium collection of high-quality, authentic Caged Chickens stock photos, royalty-free images, and pictures. It led to a fall in the number of battery-farmed hens in New Zealand between December 2012 – when 86% of egg-laying hens were battery-farmed – and December 2022, when battery hens accounted for 10%. The ban was brought in over a 10-year phase-out period to allow the industry time to transition. Right now, approximately one-third of egg-laying hens in our country are being farmed in ‘colony’ cages,” said the charity. However, this could still leave up to 8 million hens being caged. “Contrary to many people’s understanding, restrictive cages are still being used. Are chickens kept in cages in UK At present, 16 million hens are still raised in cages every year across the UK, although companies such as Burger King and all the major supermarkets have committed to remove eggs from caged hens in their supply chains by 2025. The SPCA said a total ban on battery cages, which came into effect at the start of the year, was causing “an alarming absence of eggs on the shelves in… local supermarkets”.īut it added that many consumers failed to realise that many chickens in New Zealand were still caged. An animal welfare charity is urging New Zealand’s government to strengthen its new ban on rearing chickens in cages – as recently introduced measures cause egg shortages.
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