Battery Cage For Egg Laying Hens

EDM number 165 in 1992-93, proposed by Ron Davies on 03/06/1992.

That this House expresses its dismay at the fact that the vast majority of United Kingdom egg laying hens continue to be kept in battery cages; notes that the battery cage frustrates most of a hen's natural behaviour denying her, for example, the privacy to build a nest or the space fully to stretch her wings; notes that the bones of battery hens become so brittle that almost a third of such hens suffer from broken bones by the time they reach the stunning bath in the slaughter house; further notes that the current EC Directive on Battery Hens provides a derisory minimum floor space of 450 sq. cm. per hen, which is less than the size of a sheet of A4 paper; and requests the Government to urge its EC partners to agree to a phase out of the battery cage and to the establishment of proper welfare criteria of the alternative systems for keeping egg laying hens.

This motion has been signed by a total of 111 MPs.