As one Defra agency appears to be finally learning the painful lessons of IT rollouts gone wrong, another seems to have walked into the same trap. Welfare lobby lays into beak trimming
ANIMAL welfare pressure group Compassion in World Farming has urged Defra to uphold the ban on beak trimming of laying hens and to support alternative systems.
Defra decided to ban beak trimming in 2002, with the legislation due to come into force in January 2011, but the Farm Animal Welfare Council has recommended the ban should be postponed until an unnamed date.
However, the CIWF has argued that science today is as strong as in 2002 and the eight years the industry was given to implement the ban was sufficient.
Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser at CIWF, said egg producers had been slow to adapt their methods of production and it was ‘totally unacceptable’ for them to say they need more time.
Readers' comments (1)
Rosemary Marshall | 30 November 2009 5:23 pm
How I agree with Compassion in World Farming. The Farm Animal Welfare Council is not worthy of that name if they can procrastinate about such a barbaric practice. I suppose the real issue is that if beak 'trimming' is banned hens will not be able to be kept in the 'enriched' cage. Alas the industry wishes to maintain this after 2012, instead of more humane methods which give chickens adequate space enabling them to carrry out their natural behaviours. These are utterly essential to them, having developed over many thousands of years.
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