Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Animal welfare activists have called on Australia to bring forward its ban on cage eggs after battery cages for layer hens became illegal in New Zealand on 1 January.
The Australian government last year committed to phasing out battery cages for hens by 2036, a 14-year lead time for a reform that followed seven years of negotiation with the egg industry to update the animal welfare standards and guidelines for poultry.
New Zealand announced its 2023 phase-out in 2012.
Australia is more than a decade behind similar nations in responding to consumer sentiment and improving chicken welfare, according to Glenys Oogjes of Animals Australia.
“Europe phased them out in 2012 and that’s about when New Zealand started their phase-out,” Oogjes told Guardian Australia. “So we’re not just 10 years behind. We are at least 20 if not 30 years behind in regard to the science and the ethics.”
Oogjes said the government was playing catch-up with retailers and most farmers who have already begun to voluntarily phase out the use of laying cages. She said regulators had an obligation to bring forward the 2036 deadline and bring the standards in line with market demand.
“By 2025, only two years away now, each of the major supermarkets will not be selling any caged eggs at all,” she said. “The trend is absolutely under way.
“It’s so sad that the law is behind the community’s view – and indeed the supermarkets’ view – that cages have to go.”
The 2036 phase-out was announced in August and was criticised at the time as too lax by animal welfare groups and too strict by farmers.
Oogjes said the criticism was only coming from a small number of farmers ho had invested in “outdated” infrastructure. She said the main barrier was balancing the various political interests of state governments, some of which held back the reforms.
Jed Goodfellow from the Australian Alliance for Animals said he hoped that state agricultural ministers would negotiate a faster phase-out when they met in February.
“It’s a bit disappointing, we should be able to do it faster,” Goodfellow said. “And it really just comes down to Australia being a federated country, we’ve got to get agreement from all states and territories. And, unfortunately, we’ve seen the New South Wales government in particular, dragging the chain.”
NSW has the largest proportion of cage egg producers in the country, he said, and the state government has been “sensitive to the views of the egg industry” in negotiating national reforms.
But he stressed that the 14-year timeframe was only a recommendation at this stage and there was still time to alter any national agreement for the better.
Goodfellow said arguments against banning battery cages were losing validity in the face of overwhelming public sentiment and retail demand for free range eggs.
“The writing has been on the wall in terms of the phase-out of cages for many, many years,” he said. “So the industry has had plenty of time to adjust, and now they’re getting another 10 years.”
He said with that kind of lead time, there was no room for the industry to mount an argument that it wasn’t prepared for the change.
“We see year on year at the supermarket level that when consumers can make the distinction between the caged egg and cage-free eggs, they’re moving more and more towards the cage-free segment,” Goodfellow said.
The industry groups Egg Farmers Australia and Australian Eggs declined to comment on the New Zealand ban. In August Egg Farmers Australia said it was “dissatisfied” with the new guidelines and that the phase-out should be pushed back to 2046.
The federal agriculture department and NSW Department of Primary Industries did not respond before publication..
