Abstract
This article aims to analyze the effectiveness of animal welfare certification for compliance with the legal prohibition of cruelty and mistreatment in the egg industry. I analyze the conditions of conventional cage systems, the legal protection to laying hens in Brazil, and the animal welfare certification for laying hens. I conclude that the existing welfare certification for laying hens is enough to ensure the accomplishment of the law, but it is necessary to consider ways to stimulate producers to obtain this certification and, therefore, to change their mode of production, providing a high level of welfare for laying hens.
Highlights
Exploitation of Laying HensThe consistency of bones of battery hens is akin to potato crisps[29]
This article aims to analyze the effectiveness of animal welfare certification for compliance with the legal prohibition of cruelty and mistreatment in the egg industry
I analyze the conditions of conventional cage systems, the legal protection to laying hens in Brazil, and the animal welfare certification for laying hens
Summary
The consistency of bones of battery hens is akin to potato crisps[29] Such a problem is raised by the amount of eggs that the chickens are forced to lay artificially, so that the egg industry has as much profit. The egg industry practices that prevent the natural behavior of laying hens and are extremely cruel and painful to them, causing a lifetime of suffering, are the following: tiny cages; lack of contact with ground; non-interaction with other birds; forced molting; cannibalism[34] and consequent debeaking[35]; no space for physical exercises, scratch and dust bath; lack of access to nests and perches; impossibility of escape and fight against predators; inability to spread their wings; discomfort of spending a life stand, without being able to squat down and spend a life under a metal wire floor that mutilates the claws. In Brazil, which 95 percent of the one hundred million chickens exploited in industrial production are confined in battery cages[36] and each cage confines five to ten chickens and provides a space smaller than an A4 sheet of paper for each bird[37, 34] billion eggs were laid[38] in 2013 and, that same year, 168 eggs were consumed per person
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