Chook farm on notice as regulator cries fowl - Newcastle Herald (NSW) 27.08.2009
BY GABRIEL WINGATE-PEARSE
27/08/2009 9:50:00 AM
 
Does any living creature deserve such a wretched, miserable life?
THOUSANDS of egg-laying hens at Ringal Valley Farm in Belmont North are living in cages which fail to meet NSW regulations and which breach the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
The farm has been put on notice by the RSPCA following a routine inspection, and management has been given three months to comply.
The same farm was the subject of a formal complaint by Animal Liberation NSW executive director Mark Pearson who claims he took a series of photographs at Ringal Valley on July 25 and August 2.
The images show the birds living in cramped, poorly lit conditions in unlittered cages.
Some of the images show birds stocked three to a cage where there should be two, and one image shows a bird perched atop a carcass.
RSPCA chief inspector David Oshannessy confirmed that the cages at Ringal Valley fail to meet regulations following the introduction of new rules in January last year, including issues with the waterers, cage openings, cage height and, in a small proportion of the cages, overstocking.
Ringal Valley chicken farm on the Pacific Highway has been operated by the Livingstone family since 1938.
Responding to the allegations yesterday, Ian Livingstone told The Herald that his father, as owner and operator, was phasing the farm out and moving to a free-range operation at Wallalong.
"It's a long-term phase out, it was a 60,000 bird farm, it is now down to 3000, and it's being phased out," he said.
The cages were originally designed to hold three birds, he said, but a bird had been taken out of each cage to help meet the new regulations.
Mr Livingstone denied that birds were still being kept three to a cage, and said the birds were always looked after, with any dead animals removed on a daily basis.
"Our operations run a two-bird cage so if they [NSW Animal Liberation] have an image showing a three-bird cage I would really question whether that is of our operation," he said.
"I would say the caged operation will be probably be wound up in six to 12 months; it's the life of the bird."
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/chook-farm-on-notice-as-regulator-cries-fowl/1607164.aspx
Battery (Egg Laying) Hens
At any given time, 11 million egg laying hens are so intensively confined that they are unable to walk or stretch their wings, much less exercise normal behaviours such as dust-bathing and foraging.
Scientists world wide condemn this method of egg production for the undoubted cruelty that it is. Caged hens are allowed less than one A4 size sheet of paper, and develop severe foot pain from standing on wire floors as well as other bone, skin and feather deformities. “Spent” hens are loaded and carted off for slaughter with consideration only relative to their also spent monetary value. Stunning, by means of electric bath, is often ineffective, meaning that many are slaughtered while fully conscious. This is appalling cruelty, and it exists because a Code of Practice allows it.
Chicken Mutilation
The beak of a normal chicken has complex and sensitive nerve structure/system. Chicks have half of their upper beak and one third of their lower beak sliced off with a hot wire to “prevent cannibalism”, caused by the intensive conditions under which the birds are kept, and this causes them lifelong pain.
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The best efforts of animal advocates over many years have not prevailed over the systematic torture of 11 million egg laying hens in Australia.
Another little considered fact is that 11 million male chicks are discarded each year because males don't lay eggs - they are either suffocated in a plastic bag under the weight of other chicks (the industry calls this 'gassing'), or are dropped into a oversized 'blender'.
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