Egg industry, Humane Society propose cage laws

MARY CLARE JALONICK

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Threat­ened with a series of state laws crack­ing down on cramped cages, the egg indus­try on Thurs­day said it would agree to seek fed­eral reg­u­la­tion to improve con­di­tions for egg-laying hens.

In an unusual move, the United Egg Pro­duc­ers announced the effort in a joint appear­ance with the Humane Soci­ety of the United States. The egg group rep­re­sents 95 per­cent of the egg-laying hens in the United States.

Wayne Pacelle, the Humane Society’s pres­i­dent, said the new stan­dards would be a his­toric improve­ment for mil­lions of animals.

The two groups are propos­ing that Con­gress write and pass leg­is­la­tion to phase-out cramped cages over sev­eral years and grad­u­ally require what they call “enriched” cages. Those cages would give hens more space, perches and scratch­ing areas that would allow them to express nat­ural behav­iors. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would also require com­pa­nies to indi­cate on egg car­tons how their hens were treated, with phrases such as “eggs from caged hens” or “eggs from free-range hens.”

The pro­posal comes after laws requir­ing bet­ter hen con­di­tions were passed in Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia, Michi­gan and Ohio. Ani­mal wel­fare groups were gear­ing up to pro­pose addi­tional stan­dards in Wash­ing­ton state and Oregon.

“We are com­mit­ted to work­ing together for the good of the hens in our care and believe a national stan­dard is far supe­rior than a patch­work of state laws and reg­u­la­tions that would be cum­ber­some for our cus­tomers and con­fus­ing to con­sumers,” said Bob Krouse, chair­man of the egg group and an Indi­ana egg farmer.

The more-cramped con­ven­tional cages are now used by more than 90 per­cent of the egg indus­try. Under the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, egg pro­duc­ers would invest $4 bil­lion over the next 15 years to phase them all out and the amount of space birds are given would grad­u­ally increase over that time.

Food safety advo­cates have also pushed for larger cages as the smaller ones can pro­mote the spread of bird feces, which can cause sal­mo­nella or E. coli poi­son­ing. Last year, two Iowa egg farms recalled more than a half-billion eggs after a sal­mo­nella out­break sick­ened almost 2,000 people.

The egg industry’s move could set a prece­dent for other food pro­duc­ers. The pork indus­try crit­i­cized the deal, cit­ing con­cerns that some­thing sim­i­lar would be expected of them.

“Leg­is­la­tion pre-empting state laws on egg pro­duc­tion sys­tems would set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for allow­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to dic­tate how live­stock and poul­try pro­duc­ers raise and care for their ani­mals,” said National Pork Pro­duc­ers Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Doug Wolf. “It would inject the fed­eral gov­ern­ment into the mar­ket­place with no mea­sure­able ben­e­fit to pub­lic or ani­mal health and welfare.”

Posted by AP News on Jul 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.