Many of the Danish organic henhouses are breeding big animal welfare problems. Poor food, illness, lack of medicines, the extraction of feathers, cannibalism and stress are all factors that contribute to the 2000 statistic that put the death rate for organic /free range chickens at around 16%, a figure three to four times higher than that for battery hens.
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Batteries meanwhile have good hygiene, a low death rate and limited problems with plucking out feathers and cannibalism.
The Danish Animal Welfare Council (Det Dyreetiske Råd) told newspaper Jyllands Posten yesterday that batteries can be a better alternative to free range: “The problem is that animal welfare is not necessarily better in the alternative systems than in the batteries. The DDR has found that there are big welfare problems in all of the egg production systems.”
Professor Peter Sandøe, chairman of DDR, calls it a choice between various evils: “In the current production system there are big problems […] enriched batteries are an acceptable alternative […] but it is still unnatural.”
The DDR has pointed out that some of the problems in free-range chickens was that they been bred to live in batteries. Strict organic rules also mean that infections tend to lead to death because they cannot always be treated with antibiotics. Predators may also attack the chickens and bad husbandry sometimes undercuts the organic ideals of animal treatment.
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By GlobalDataSandøe admits however that making stricter rules for hen welfare in Denmark would not help, as the country would then be flooded with cheaper imported eggs. He asked for less “organic” ideology and more pragmatism in organic egg production.
By Penny Leese, just-food.com correspondant
