12 October 2021

Right now, over 10 million Aussie hens are suffering in barren battery cages. It’s arguably the worst animal welfare issue in Australia.

Battery cages are small, barren wire cages. Inside sheds there will be many rows and levels of cages stacked on top of one another with one shed housing up to 100,000 birds. The space given to each bird is less than the size of a piece of A4 paper.

For a hen to have a good life, she needs the freedom to move around, to stretch, flap her wings, perch and access a nesting area to lay her eggs. She can’t do any of these things in a barren battery cage.

The RSPCA has launched a campaign encouraging Australians to reach out to their state and territory governments, urging them to support the phasing out of battery cages.

The new proposed standards have now been completed by an independent panel of experts and they include a phase out of battery cages! Although this draft has now been released, it is still yet to be endorsed by state and territory governments to become law.

This is a once in 20-year review of the national standards and if battery cages are not phased out under these standards, tens of millions of layer hens will spend their entire lives in barren battery cages, for the foreseeable future.

The Western Australian Government has consistently backed the phasing out of battery cages.