Agriculture minister Jim Fairlie said if it was implemented Scotland would be “leading the way in improving the welfare of animals”.
The use of battery cages for birds was banned in the UK in 2012.
But there are still more than 1.1m chickens in Scotland kept in “enriched cages”, which provide birds with more room to nest, roost and scratch than the smaller battery cages.
A survey in 2020 found that almost nine out of 10 people (88%) in the UK believed that using cages in farming was cruel.
And more than three quarters (77%) supported a complete ban on their use.
The Scottish government’s preference is for a ban on the installation of new cages from 2033, followed by a complete ban on keeping birds in enriched cages from 2034.
Ministers believe this option “most effectively balances improvements in bird welfare and ensures sustainability for the laying hen sector”.
But the consultation also seeks views on banning the use of enriched cages from 2030.
And it proposes a non-regulatory option, which would see shops and caterers commit to stop selling and using eggs from birds kept in enriched cages by 2034.
‘Significant progress’
Mr Fairlie said the Scottish government’s most recent programme for government had included commitments “to improve the welfare of laying hens to ensure their confinement does not negatively impact their normal behaviours”.
He added: “Significant progress has already been made in recognising the importance of animal welfare – both in government policies and the demand from the public in the choice they make when shopping.
“If implemented, the ban would be another example of Scotland leading the way in improving the welfare of animals by being the first UK nation to ban the practice.”
The minister said the European Union had put forward legislation to prohibit using cages for all farmed livestock, with Luxembourg and Austria already banning them and others phasing them out.
And he said the Scottish government would also call for evidence, in due course, on the use of cages in the gamebird, quail egg and meat sectors.
Mark Borthwick, World Animal Protection policy manager, welcomed the news and said: “We’re pleased to see Scotland leading the way in consulting on the ban of cages for laying hens which are still in use in the UK.
“Enriched cages for laying hens will be banned in other countries including in Germany in 2025, in Czechia by 2027 and in Slovakia by 2030.
“France has banned the installation of any new cages. The UK is behind, and the other nations are slipping behind even further.
“It is time to end the use of cages which restrict animals’ natural behaviours and cause great suffering.”
‘Leading the way’ ? – 10 YEARS TOO LATE ! – Regards Mark
Am just sending out news links about this today as there is a lot going on – basically, activists got into slaughterhouse re pig killing; and dead baby piglets are left outside a town hall as a result – with the words ‘Pignorant on crime’ sprayed onto the pavement. All to highlight the cruel and suffering endured by pigs.
The courts and prison system are in chaos here – with everything taking far too long to send REAL criminals through the system – but if you do animal rights, you get charged within hours and it all moves on quickly – how strange !
Sonoma County voters will be asked this November if they want to restrict the size of animal farms.
The county clerk and registrar of voters approved the measure for the ballot last Wednesday after animal rights and environmental activists gathered more than enough signatures to meet the required 19,746.
The petition drive was led by the group Coalition to End Factory Farming, who want to end large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in Sonoma County.
The initiative calls for a three-year phase-out of one classification of animal farms — large CAFO. It does not affect farms classified by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency as medium CAFO or smaller.
According to Coalition spokesperson Samantha Faye in a statement released Monday, the ordinance could affect two dozen sites that classify as Large CAFOs, which she said are only about 2.4% of animal farms in the county.
“Across these two dozen facilities, there are approximately 2.9 million animals confined,” she said. “These facilities disproportionately affect animals, our water, our air quality, our public health, and the sustainability of agriculture in Sonoma County.”
The group uses the EPA definition of CAFO, which differs depending on an animal’s species, their quantities and the way the farm handles animal waste. For example, a duck farm is classified as a “large CAFO” if it confines 5,000 ducks and uses a liquid manure handling system that washes their waste into a holding pond or lagoon on site. If it disposes of manure some other way, it doesn’t become a large CAFO until it has 30,000 ducks.
The potential ordinance would state that CAFOs disproportionately affect low-income and disadvantaged communities, and that the county intends to provide a retraining and employment assistance program for workers at CAFOs to facilitate the transition to safer forms of work.
“We are against the very vague language in the proposed ballot initiative put forth by the Coalition to End Factory Farming, and the group behind them, Direct Action Everywhere,” said Jennifer Reichardt of Sonoma County Poultry, Liberty Ducks in an email. “This will not save family farms. The goal of this initiative is to put farms out of business.”
Reichardt said that if the measure is passed, residents in the Bay Area will have to pay a higher price for meat, dairy, and eggs, because they will need to be imported.
“If it is passed, it will increase greenhouse emissions from trucking in products from further away, increase the cost of food, and shut down local, often multi-generational, businesses. It will put hundreds of employees out of work, and force the import of other meat, dairy, and eggs from outside the county and state,” Reichardt said.
Sonoma is one of four California counties where the highly pathogenic avian flu was detected among commercial flocks last year, prompting the board of supervisors to declare a local state of emergency in December 2023.
The Coalition to End Factory Farming includes animal rights groups, small farm advocates, and Direct Action Everywhere, an organization that, among other things, wants to make legal the right of people to enter places such as factory farms to remove animals they say are in distress. Their activism includes trespassing to obtain video footage inside farms and rescuing animals.
Their co-founder, San Francisco attorney Wayne Hsiung, was arrested in November and sentenced in Sonoma County to 90 days in jail and two years of probation last year for felony trespassing at chicken and duck farms in 2018 and 2019.
At a press conference Monday, Cassie King of Direct Action Everywhere said they watch farms from public property or may use satellite imagery to decide to enter a facility. For example, they may see if birds never go outside in a facility that’s supposedly free range.
“Sometimes they find animals who are on the brink of death, who are clearly ill or injured and can’t get themselves up, can’t get themselves to food and water,” she said. “If they leave them behind, they will surely die, either die slowly from starvation or dehydration. In many cases, facility employees will come and kill the individuals who are too sick or weak to feed themselves to survive.”
US judge in Nevada hands wild horse advocates rare victory in ruling on mustang management plans
In a rare legal victory for wild horse advocates, a judge has ruled U.S. land managers failed to adopt a legal herd management plan or conduct the necessary environmental review before 31 mustangs died during the roundup of more than 2,000 horses in Nevada last summer.
U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du in Reno ordered the Bureau of Land Management to complete a formal herd management plan for the Pancake complex in eastern Nevada by next March 24. She also ordered the agency to reopen an environmental assessment to include the potential impact of roundups on wildfire risks.
On 26 March the Council of the EU endorsed the revised Environmental Crime Directive, strengthening penalties for behaviour negatively impacting the environment and wild animals. The Directive provides welcomed improvements to the current legal framework, but calls for stronger and more specific measures to be adopted by Member States when transposing the legislation.
Clarification of offences regarding animals
While the previous Directive addressed poaching and illegal trade of wild animals as offences, the new legislation provides additional information on their scope. Online trade is now expressly covered. The legislation also gives additional information on the species covered, detailing the lists of threatened species that should be considered. In line with the previous Directive, the law provides an exemption when the conduct concerns “a negligible quantity of specimens”. However, the new text specifies that elements must be taken into account when assessing this condition, including the conservation status of the species. We therefore ask Member States to enforce strict sanctions for offences concerning species threatened by wildlife trade or other circumstances affecting their populations, even when such offences concern only one or a few individuals.
Introduction of specific sanctions
The previous Directive provides minimal guidance on the penalties that should sanction the offences listed, providing that they must be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”. The revised Directive is more specific, introducing sanctions for both natural and legal persons. In practice, Member States will have to ensure that the maximum sanctions for offences related to poaching and trading of animals are no less than three years imprisonment for natural persons and a fine corresponding to 3% of the total worldwide turnover for legal persons. These sanctions remain insufficient in light of the negative impact such behaviour has on biodiversity, conservation and animal welfare, but it is a significant step forward.
Management of confiscated animals
Although not legally binding, one recital of the legislation provides that Member States should ensure that frozen and confiscated proceeds and instrumentalities are appropriately managed, in line with their nature. In other words, Member States are encouraged to adopt further provisions to guarantee the welfare of confiscated animals. We call on Member States to further consider confiscated assets to cover the costs for the maintenance of these animals in appropriate conditions, at minimum during the proceedings.
Besides these improvements, we highlight the ambitions of the new Directive to tackle offences related to the environment as a whole. We hope that this revised framework will significantly deter harmful behaviour resulting in reduced degradation, improved environmental health and better living conditions for wild animals.
Despite a clear commitment from the European Commission in 2021 to deliver proposals to ban caged animal farming by the end of 2023, it has failed to deliver on its promise.
As a result, last week, the End the Cage Age Citizens’ Committee — a group of seven EU citizens who started the ECI — launched a ground-breaking legal action against the European Commission for failing to act.
Funded by Compassion in World Farming, this historic case could result in the Commission being compelled by the court to set out a clear timescale for the legislation.
It is the first legal action to hold the Commission to account over its failure to act on an ECI — an important test case for both animal welfare and democracy.
Despite overwhelming support, animals continue to suffer
Back in 2021, Compassion in World Farming, along with millions of European citizens, celebrated the news of the European Commission’s clear commitment.
It followed the first ever successful European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) to ‘End the Cage Age’, which was signed by an overwhelming 1.4 million EU citizens and supported by a coalition of 170 NGOs led by Compassion.
ECIs were introduced with the specific purpose of giving citizens more influence over EU decision making and the tool is described by the European Commission as “a way for you and other Europeans to take an active part in EU policy-making”.
Pregnant sows are forced to nurse their piglets in crates so small they can’t even turn around; chickens can’t spread their wings, and along with countless rabbits and quail will spend all their lives in barren cages.
In October last year, the European Commission’s own Eurobarometer survey revealed that an overwhelming nine out of ten, or 89% of EU citizens — around 400 million people — believe animals should not be farmed in individual cages.
The Commission’s own scientific advisers, the European Food Safety Authority, have also backed the phasing out of cages on welfare grounds for pigs, dairy calves, laying hens, ducks, quail and rabbits.
Meanwhile, more than 300 million pigs, hens, rabbits, ducks, quail and geese continue to suffer confinement and misery in cages across the EU each year.
Pregnant sows are forced to nurse their piglets in crates so small they can’t even turn around; chickens can’t spread their wings, and along with countless rabbits and quail will spend all their lives in barren cages.
Ducks and geese are caged for force-feeding to produce foie gras.
How did the ban get derailed?
In September, we hoped to hear European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set out the plans to deliver the ban in her State of the Union speech.
Instead, what we heard were words that echoed the letter she received from the farming federation Copa Cogeca. It seems she caved into pressure from the agriculture lobby to put the ban on hold.
Together with my colleagues in End the Cage Age Citizens’ Committee, we have made repeated requests to meet with the president on behalf of the millions of EU citizens who support the cages ban, without success.
The cages ban — part of the Commission’s excellent Farm to Fork strategy to meet climate and nature obligations — also has the chance to provide wider environmental and socio-economic benefits.
Yet, last October, an investigation from Lighthouse Reports revealed that “an increasingly assertive meat industry helped derail a historic democratic demand to improve animal welfare standards in the EU”.
We simply cannot allow the powerful farming lobby to have preferential access to decision-makers to influence them to backtrack on promises they have made to citizens.
This is particularly unjust when those citizens have followed the very process designed to give them more influence over EU decision-making. As a result of this injustice, both animal welfare and democracy are now at stake.
There is simply no justification for any further delay. All the appropriate preparation, assessments and consultations have already been carried out by Commission officials and the proposals make strong provision for financial support to help farmers transition to cage-free systems during a phase-out.
This measure is backed by the animal welfare movement who believe public subsidies should be redirected to reward farmers for transitioning to high welfare and nature-positive systems that benefit society.
Pursuing legal action is not a choice we have taken lightly, but we cannot allow the European Commission to break its promises to citizens, making a mockery of democracy in the process.
The cages ban — part of the Commission’s excellent Farm to Fork strategy to meet climate and nature obligations — also has the chance to provide wider environmental and socio-economic benefits.
A report from the Institute for European Environmental Policy found that the ban would have greater sustainability benefits.
In addition, it concluded that the current discrepancy between legislation in member states was leading to uneven market conditions across the EU, and that a level playing field should be created.
Democracy is not to be mocked
Pursuing legal action is not a choice we have taken lightly, but we cannot allow the European Commission to break its promises to citizens, making a mockery of democracy in the process.
Most importantly, we cannot stand by silently while millions of animals continue to suffer in cages. Caving into the big agriculture lobby and continuing to use taxpayer funds to prop up this damaging sector is not helping citizens, or the majority of small-to-medium-scale farmers.
The hope is that this ground-breaking legal action — launched on behalf of millions of supportive EU citizens as well as the voiceless 300 million animals still suffering every day in cages — will speed up the ban and ensure that every cage is an empty cage.
We will not rest until we end the Cage Age.
Olga Kikou is Head of Compassion in World Farming EU, the leading farm animal welfare organisation dedicated to ending factory farming and achieving humane and sustainable food production.
National parks are some of our country’s most beautiful landscapes, combining stunning scenery and beautiful wildlife.
Unfortunately, all is not as it seems. Hunters with packs of hounds maraud across the parks, chasing and killing wildlife, causing havoc to the public and the environment.
This fundamentally undermines the National Park Authorities’ aims to protect its land and preserve its flora, fauna, and wildlife for future generations.
In plenary today, Members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission (EC) to come forward with the outstanding legislative proposals on animal welfare, the future of which remains uncertain. They stressed that the delay is putting the credibility of European institutions in question, as citizens’ demands remain unanswered.
The EC had committed to publish four animal welfare proposals by the end of 2023, but backtracked from this promise by only publishing an unambitious Transport Regulation, and not putting forward the promised Kept Animals, Slaughter and Labelling regulations. The proposals were also set to include phasing out cages by 2027, in reply to the End the Cage Age ECI in which 1.4 million citizens asked for a transition to cage-free systems.
During the plenary today, a record number of MEPs (41) intervened in the oral question tabled by Neils Fuglsang (S&D, DK). 30 MEPs stressed that while the EC continues to delay action, millions of animals continue to suffer in horrible conditions across all stages of their lives; from farm to transport to slaughter. They criticised the EC for doing “very little”for animal welfare in the past legislative term, and questioned the democratic aspect of ECIs if policymakers do not react to the demands of the citizens. “You are letting down 3 million citizens,” many reiterated, making reference to the End the Cage Age and Fur Free Europe ECIs – both of which remain pending action by the EC.
They urged the EC to come forward with a concrete timeline and answer to the demands of millions of EU citizens.
Elisa Ferreira, Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, while admitting that more needs to be done for resilient food systems, said that work on these legislative files is “still ongoing”, and the EC “is analysing the best course of action”. She did not make any commitments on timeline.
In the run-up to the European Elections, Eurogroup for Animals has launched the Vote for Animals campaign which encourages candidate MEPs to take a pledge for animals, while informing citizens about the importance of these elections for progress on animal welfare.
The EC broke its promise on presenting the animal welfare legislation package. And while we wait for a clear timeline, millions of animals continue to live in cages, male chicks continue to be gassed at a day old, while chickens are bred to grow so fast their bodies cannot keep up. These animals deserve a legislative proposal, but there is none. We call on the EC to present a concrete timeline.
MEP Neils Fuglsang (S&D).
What has happened to the promised legislation?
What about the ban on cages?
We have been fighting for years.
How long will these animals have to wait? Not a day longer.
MEP Anja Hazekamp (The Left)
Not answering to the demands of ECIs would threaten the credibility of EU institutions – the animal welfare legislation should be a priority in the next mandate. We are disappointed – we need to see changes.
MEP Tilly Metz (Greens/efa)
The ECI is an excellent tool to improve democracy, but it only works if those who make the law react to what the citizens want. 1.4 million citizens asked for a ban on cages – more than four years have passed and 300 million animals continue to spend their lives in terrible conditions.
The omission of meat-eating reduction from proposals in a UN roadmap to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger is “bewildering”, according to academic experts.
The group also criticised the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report for “dismissing” the potential of alternative proteins, such as plant-based meat, to reduce the impact of livestock on the environment.
World Animals Voice 