Our hens deserve better than cages

In a December issue of the Free Press Community Review, I wrote about a countrywide protest against Sobeys that drew attention to the retailer’s failure to honour its commitment to enact cage-free egg sourcing. As a community correspondent, I also highlighted a neighbourhood connection to more humanely-produced eggs.

Two weeks later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Community Review in response to my column, written by Roger Pelissero, the chair of Egg Farmers of Canada. Pelissero argued that, actually, “egg farmers work tirelessly to ensure the health and well-being of their hens” regardless of how they are housed.

What am I to think when the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency — as EFC is legally called — takes the time to publicly rebut the viewpoint of a grassroots animal advocate expressed in a hyperlocal weekly newspaper?

The lobby doth protest too much, methinks.

Yet, the rebuttal itself struck me as perfunctory; it had little to do with the actual points made in my column and resorted instead to vague, clichéd claims about the egg industry.

Let’s start with the first such claim, the very title of the letter: “Animal care is our top priority.” This statement is only true if “care” is interpreted so broadly as to be effectively meaningless. The Canadian Egg Marketing Agency was established by proclamation in 1972 under the Farm Product Agencies Act; their top priority by definition is “the orderly production and marketing of shell eggs in Canada,” as stated on the Government of Canada website. The word “care” does not appear once in either the proclamation or the Act, nor do the terms “health” or “well-being.”

EFC does have what it calls its Animal Care Program, which provides the framework for the mandatory farm inspections and audits Mr. Pelissero mentioned in his letter. According to EFC, egg farmers must meet the animal welfare requirements of this program to receive and maintain their Egg Quality Assurance certification.

However, the standards upon which EQA certification is based are not legally binding. This is fox-in-the-henhouse industry self-regulation; there are virtually no laws in Canada protecting animals on farms.

That said, it is worth examining the “science-based” standards that industry prescribes itself. Like all “codes of practice” developed by the National Farm Animal Care Council — a group dominated by the meat, egg and dairy industries — the code pertaining to laying hens takes into account findings from a review of the scientific literature. Whether they can be said to be based on this science is a hen of a different colour, however.

For starters, the review of scientific literature is only one part of the code process. It also considers stakeholder input and practical requirements to promote consistent application and uptake across Canada. To this end, the NFACC stresses the centrality of consensus decision-making, stating on its website that “consensus is reached when each participant can live with the outcome or decision.” This approach, it seems to me, is more conducive to a set of lowest-common-denominator standards than ones that truly maximize animal welfare.

This might explain why the code requirements for hen housing and space allowance tend to be less stringent than the science actually calls for. For example, so-called “enriched cages” are required to provide at least 750 square centimetres of floor space per hen, roughly equivalent to a sheet of legal-size paper. Yet the scientific studies reviewed suggest per-hen allowances in enriched cages of up to 5,000 square cm.

Most curious about the letter is its failure to acknowledge that the NFACC has codified the phase-out of conventional cages. In other words, the industry has conceded that conventional cages are no longer considered acceptable for hen welfare.

But let me be clear: no cage is acceptable. The hen code of practice itself states, based on the science, that enriched cages do not fully support the natural behaviours that are important for hen health and well-being. Further, newer animal welfare research greatly favours cage-free systems. Canada lags behind its global peers on this issue, including the U.S. and much of Europe, which has banned conventional cages and is now looking to ban cages altogether.

Retailers and restaurants across Canada have begun to recognize this, with many promising to go cage-free and some achieving their goal. The protest I wrote about last month was about holding retailers accountable for their own commitments. They need leadership and cooperation from the egg industry, not the digging in of heels. And our hens deserve better.

Let’s get on with it.

Tracy Groenewegen is a community correspondent (South Osborne) for the Community Review.