Improving Welfare in Battery Cages
The Scientific Veterinary Committee of the European Commission stated that "enriched cages and well designed non-cage systems have already been shown to have a number of welfare advantages over battery systems in their present form". Supporters of battery farming contend that alternative systems such as free range also have welfare problems, such as increases in cannibalism, feather pecking and vent pecking. A recent review of welfare in battery cages made the point that such welfare issues are problems of management, unlike the issues of behavioral deprivation, which are inherent in a system that keeps hens in such cramped and barren conditions. Free range egg producers can limit or eliminate injurious pecking, particularly feather pecking, through such strategies as providing environmental enrichment, feeding mash instead of pellets, keeping roosters in with the hens, and arranging nest boxes so hens are not exposed to each other's vents; similar strategies are more restricted or impossible in battery cages.
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