Animal Rights Activists Join Together With Local Communities To Protest Colony Cages
Date: 16/04/2016

Animal rights activists are joining forces tomorrow with the community of Pukekohe to protest against the use of enriched colony cages for layer hens.

South Aucklander’s recently had an enormous win against the use of enriched colony cages when Craddock Farms lost their appeal to cage 310,000 hens in the neighbouring village of Patumahoe. Now activists and community members are taking it further and asking Countdown to commit to going cage free completely.

Due to a Farmwatch expose recently about a Putararu egg farm Countdown removed eggs supplied from this farm as they do not meet basic animal welfare requirements.

Peta Berry, the spokesperson for Ban Chicken Layer Cages and the closest neighbor to the factory farm proposed by Craddock Farms said “It’s not enough for Countdown to remove the eggs from this farm temporarily, colony cages have been shown to be the cause of death for these hens and these cages need to be banned permanently.”

“Woolworths in Australia who own Countdown here have already announced they are going cage free by 2018. We want to see them do the same here. If New Zealand does not move soon on this we will be the last to go cage free.”

“60 of the United States leading organisations have announced they are going cage free and in the United Kingdom only 50% of their whole egg sales are caged. With 80 % of our egg sales coming from cages we will continue to be the laughing stock of the global egg industry.”

“We want to see Countdown match their siblings in Australia and name a date to go cage free. This would increase the cage free eggs sold in New Zealand by more than 50%.” Mrs Berry said.

ENDS

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