No more beak trimming

[pastryman]

Good news from Denmark. The producers of battery chicken eggs in Denmark have agreed voluntarily to stop all use of beak trimming. Effective from two weeks ago. Some of them stopped 3 years ago.

Two things made this possible. Selective breeding against aggression and the new enriched battery cages i the European Union (with a little more room, roosts, and dust bath. All tiny, but it works to some degree).

Also the battery cage egg-industry in Denmark is under pressure. McDonald's and other big companies have turned their backs on them and started using organic eggs. And there is a big campaign to make supermarkets stop selling eggs from battery chickens.

A small step, but hopefully some day beak trimming will be a thing of the past. But it is still used here in cage free indoor production and the non-organic free range production. Only the organic chickens have enough space to not peck each other in large groups.

 

[SunnySkyFarm]

This is great! I hope soon this movement will spread to America.

 

[SD Bird Lady]

Glad to hear. Unfortunately I don't think it will catch on in the US for quite some time. Americans are all about cheap food. When we are used to being able to get eggs $.88 a dozen (on sale) then it is hard to get people to pay higher prices. It is sad but "out of sight out of mind" should be the motto of the good ol' US of A

 

[pastryman]

Should not be impossible Eliza5. But first it should spread to the whole European Union. By law they use the same enriched cages, and many of them all ready use the same kind of chickens. They could stop beak trimming tomorrow.

But now people in the US can say that the enriched cages are better and should be the minimum standard.

 

[pastryman]

Most people are like that here also SD Bird Lady. Sadly. But perhaps farmers are a bit better educated here. I don't know. There is a lot of public research in agriculture, and they work very closely with farmers. They try to make profit and animal well fare go hand in hand.

They still push the animals and the land way way to much. But we don't see the kind of systematic abuse I see in news from other countries. Farmers here see it as unprofessional and vets and farmer organizations would stop it.

Of cause it helps that the present government has all ready pledged to double the organic production by 2020. It is all ready the largest in the world. Perhaps big chemical companies and so on are stronger in America - or the political system weaker?

But organic producers here have more growth in export than non-organic. Politicians really like and respect that.

Funny story: A very small danish organic dairy with 3 employees make some very special ice cream with sea weed and stuff like that. Singapore Airlines found them, and now they make an ice cream with singapore sling to be served on the flights.

Sorry, now this really is rambling, and I will stop now.