http://news.guelphmercury.com/Opinions/article/424753
What happens when bad animal practices become normal? GuelphMercury.com - Opinions - What happens when bad animal practices become normal?

Karen Levenson

Ask farmers about humane farm animal practices, and you'll likely get variations of: I put the needs of my animals before my own; my animals are better treated than some people or my animals are my livelihood, it's in my interest to care for them.

They'll mention the Codes of Practice, "developed with scientists," recommending how farmers treat food animals. They'll reassure you their eggs are safe and nutritious. Scratch beneath the surface of these niceties, however, and you'll see a very different picture of intensive egg farms in Canada.

No laws govern the treatment of farm animals on farms in Canada. The Codes of Practice for the care and handling of farm animals have set the absolute minimum standard for animal welfare. As voluntary guidelines, most are not enforceable.

While animal-agriculture scientists may offer advice, the industry controls the votes on what standards are adopted. Profits -- not animal welfare -- drive the process.

In the egg industry, acceptable practices include using battery cages -- rows of overcrowded, bare wire cages, one on top of the other, where laying hens can't stretch their wings or escape an aggressive cage-mate and, with little room to move, they rub against the cage wires, causing severe feather loss, bruises and abrasions -- and debeaking, the searing off of up to half of the hen's beak, using electrically heated blades, which causes acute stress, impaired ability to feed and, according to poultry scientists J. Breward and M.J. Gentle, both short and long-term pain.

While the whole flock is vaccinated for various diseases and given treatments if illness erupts, there's no individual treatment for sick or wounded birds.

During a visit to the University of Guelph, Temple Grandin, possibly the world's most recognized animal-agriculture scientist, condemned intensive egg farming.

"The more I learned about the egg industry the more disgusted I got. Some of the practices that had become 'normal' for this industry were overt cruelty. Bad had become normal. Egg producers had become desensitized to suffering."

The reality is, factory farming produces cheap animal products, not humane or safe animal treatment. In 2005, a United Nations task force identified high-density poultry farming as a root cause of the bird flu epidemic. Commenting on a Canadian outbreak of avian influenza, University of Ottawa virologist Earl Brown said "high intensity chicken rearing is the perfect environment for generating virulent avian flu virus."

Traditionally raised birds -- which are allowed to range freely -- are believed to have more resistance than the stressed, genetically similar birds kept in overcrowded cages on factory farms.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that food-borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 52,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. Numbers are lower in Canada, however, the concerns are the same. Factory farms, which overcrowd animals, render them more susceptible to illness. These farms are breeding grounds for campylobacter, salmonella and E. coli.

The rampant use of antimicrobials on factory farms has led to increased antibiotic resistance, creating superbugs that can withstand medical treatment in humans.

According to the World Health Organization, "about half of the total amount of antimicrobials produced globally is used in food animals." The egg industry feeds antibiotics to layer chickens mainly to promote growth and production, not to treat illness.

The non-therapeutic overuse of antimicrobials in all "food animals" is a serious public health issue, with huge costs to Canadians taxpayers, who bear the medical expenses of disease outbreak and prevention.

Creating more humane and healthy environments for hens would increase the costs of eggs, but would decrease the risk of disease and eliminate much of the daily suffering these birds endure before they are slaughtered.

By purchasing only free-range eggs, consumers can pressure egg farmers to live up to their claims of humane animal care and food safety. It's a small price to pay to keep us healthy and our egg laying hens pain free.

Karen Levenson is the director of the Animal Alliance of Canada.

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Debra Probert
Executive Director
Vancouver Humane Society
303-8623 Granville Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6P 5A2
604-266-9744

"A way of looking is a way of not looking" - Chinese Proverb