An anonymous group of animal rights activists broke into a Dunedin battery hen farm under the cover of darkness over the weekend. Animal Watch Aotearoa received the following communiqué along with videotape and photos of the rescued animals. _____________________________________________________________________

“During Easter weekend, several activists from the Animal Rescue Team broke into a Dunedin battery farm and liberated five hens under the cover of darkness. The hens are now in good homes where they will live out the rest of their natural lives in peace and freedom, unlike the thousands we were forced to leave behind.

We gained entry to the shed through an unlocked door and opened the first cages we could find. The birds were crammed in three to a cage. The corpses of some dead birds had been left in the cages along with the living birds. We took the first five living birds we found. We wished we could have taken them all, but we only had safe homes ready for five.

There are 2.5 million hens in New Zealand condemned to a life of suffering in dark sheds. The birds spend their entire lives in crowded wire cages with sloping floors. They cannot sit down or stretch their wings. They never see the sun, they cannot scratch the earth or engage in any natural behaviour.

Battery farming is a crime and it has to be stopped. The Animal Rescue Team and other activists will liberate as many hens as we can but ultimately the power rests with the public:

Don’t buy cruelty. We don’t need to eat eggs.

Every dollar spent on eggs and egg products means more suffering for animals.

The Animal Welfare Code for Battery Hens is coming up for review. We are calling on compassionate people to make submissions to the Minister of Agriculture letting him know that New Zealanders want the cruel practice of battery farming to be banned. Until all hens in New Zealand are free from the torturous conditions of battery cages, we will continue to liberate them one by one and expose the obscene reality of factory farming.

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