Animal rights activists must demand the replacement of the battery cage for hens, which is a cruel form of confinement of the birds, with the free range method
One of the cruellest ways of exploiting non-human living beings to satisfy human greed for profit is the confinement of hens in battery cages for mass production of eggs. The cages, made of wire, usually about 18 by 20 inches in size, are identical and separated from one another by common divider walls like the cells of a battery. Hence the name, ‘battery cage’. A typical egg farm may contain thousands of cages in multiple rows, each, three to five tiers high.
A cage can hold up to 11 hens, providing each an area smaller than an 8.5 inch by 11 inch sheet of paper, which is so small that the hens cannot spread their wings without touching the sides of cages or other hens. They may not only lose their feathers from abrasion caused by rubbing against the cages or one another but suffer broken bones while being taken out. Confinement in these cages deprives hens of all forms of natural behaviour like perching and roosting, scratching and foraging or just exploring. Hens and chicken are biologically oriented to forage for plants, insects and seeds which, and not the food available in the cages, constitute their normal diet. They also need to dust-bathe — sometimes doing it as many as 20 times a day in a state of freedom — to balance oil levels in their plumage to keep feathers in good condition.
Hens can fly short distances and need regular movement and exercises to remain healthy and keep their bones strong. Confinement in battery cages deny them not only this but of the seclusion they desire — a result of biological need caused by hormonal changes — while laying eggs. In a state of natural freedom, they leave their clutch in search of a hidden place where they can lay eggs and hatch them. The legendary Konrad lorenz, pioneering scientist in animal behaviour, has observed, “The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow cage mates to search there in vain for cover.”
The plight of hens in battery cages is worse than that of people sentenced to life imprisonment in a six feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide cell. A convict serving a life term can look forward to freedom at the end of the sentence which takes into account remission on grounds like good behaviour. A hen in a battery cage is sent for slaughter when it can no longer produce eggs at the rate desired. Recognising the plight of hens in such captivity, the European Commission's Scientific Veterinary Committee condemned the battery cage method in 1996 and stated, “It is clear that because of its small size and its barrenness, the battery cage as used at present has inherent severe disadvantages for the welfare of hens”. The European Union Council Directive 1999/74EC banned conventional battery cages in EU from 2012 — at the end of a 12-year phase-out. The “enriched cages” it prescribed, provides for more space and more natural living conditions for hens but still fall short of the required and the campaign for free-range egg farming continues.
Surprisingly, India's increasingly strong animal rights movement has not yet demanded the replacement of the battery cage by the free range method — with the incorporation of improvements suggested in Europe and elsewhere. The reason perhaps is that the unspeakable cruelty of the method, occurring indoors and in farms generally in rural areas, does not strike the public eye. But it is there and protests must begin immediately.