Animal rights campaigners warn of crushed egg standards

By David Cronin

Date: 24/02/05

In theory, the keeping of hens in cramped battery cages in the EU will be consigned to history in 2012 when the practice will be outlawed by an EU directive passed in 1999. But animal welfare campaigners are perturbed at the prospect of the ban being reversed or diluted.

A review of the 1999 law is currently under way. The European Commission recently received the results of a study it had requested on the socio-economic impacts of a ban. Officials say the EU executive will transmit this study along with a scientific assessment from the European Food Safety Authority to MEPs and the Union's governments in the coming months.

Paul Hook from Compassion in World Farming said that there was a real risk that the ban could be overturned as a result of pressure from egg producers and fears that it would clash with international trade rules. "This could be catastrophic," he warned.

But Vincent Cordonnier from the Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union (COPA) cited concerns by producers that the ban could harm their competitiveness. After 2012, each laying hen in the EU would have at least 750 square centimetres of space, whereas the average in countries like the US and Brazil is 350 square centimetres.

Public concern about the surrounding animal welfare issues has led to an upsurge in the number of free-range hens in the EU. The Commission's data suggests that their number rose from 3 million in 1991 to about 16.5m a decade later.

Article says that although the practice of keeping of hens in cramped battery cages in the EU was to be banned in 2012 by an EU directive passed in 1999. But animal welfare campaigners were perturbed at the prospect of the ban being reversed or diluted.