Eyes on Animals -

Eyes on Animals inspectors visited an organic "egg"  farm today. The purpose was to discuss with the farmer what welfare concerns he had for the way chickens are caught, loaded and transported to slaughter. At the moment, hens and broilers raised on organic farms are still caught and transported in the same manner as hens and broilers raised in the conventional "factory-farming" systems. There does not yet exist a specific catching company or transport company that gives extra care to the welfare of the birds. This is most unfortunate, as our inspections of chicken trucks have shown that many birds suffer horribly during loading and transport. The farmer told us he would prefer using his own friends and contacts to load his 12,000 hens, but he does not know that many people able to do the job. Loading only part of his flock at a time would be possible (4,000 birds), but then only 1/3 of the truck would be full, making it economically impossible. As a result he has to order a chicken catching company to come in. Often these catchers are very rough with the birds, some even arrive half-drunk. They pick up 4 birds at a time, 2 per hand, and carry them upside down to the crates where they then often brutally shove them into the crates. He also does not know how many hours his hens end up confined in the crates; he does not receive feedback from the slaughterhouse at what time they were finally unloaded and slaughtered. It was very disappointing to hear that these catching companies exist, despite being so rough. How has the PVE tolerated this for so long?
We showed him the higher-quality standards we wrote for catching and transport, that we would like to propose to Demeter, or possibly all organic chicken and egg producers, to adapt. He is going to give us his input and we hope that one day soon, chicken catchers will be better educated and more professional, and that chicken transport companies will provide a higher-quality service, where individual chickens are better cared for, inured ones put out of their misery and the design of the crates assures their physical comfort and safety. At the moment we are very shocked at what the chicken catching and transport industry have been tolerating for so long, and the limited initiatives taken by the chicken slaughter industry to improve the system from within.
After we visited the organic egg farm. The quality of the air inside the aviary was very good for a chicken farm- normally there is a lot of dust and ammonia making it difficult to breathe but not here. The hens had plenty of room and free access to the outdoors. They also had access to perches and nest boxes, with thick carpeting inside to give the hens a feeling of sitting on a real nest. The hens looked good with very few signs of feather pecking or other aversive behaviours. We would like to thank the farmer for his time and look forward to continuing working with caring egg farmers, wishing to improve the way their birds are caught and transported.