Day 290 - 30 Oct 96 - Page 14
1
2 MS. STEEL: Dr. Gregory related on day 19, page 55 that the
3 battery chickens at Osters were kept five to a cage with
4 about 450 square centimetres per bird of floor space, and
5 Mrs. Druce, when she was giving evidence, related how a
6 chicken with both wings fully expanded or out-stretched
7 measures roughly 30 inches across, and very few battery
8 cages measure that. Most are twenty inches across to five
9 birds - four or five birds. So it is true to say that they
10 could never extend both wings fully.
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12 I didn't have time to check this for all the mistakes,
13 there are typing errors all over the place.
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15 MR JUSTICE BELL: It is 'once', is it not?
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17 MS. STEEL: Yes, it should be. Yes - "they could never extend
18 both wings at once fully". Day 108, page 70, line 33. The
19 conditions that were outlined by Dr. Gregory relating to
20 Osters, Mrs. Druce said that they would be typical for the
21 battery egg industry, and she said that most cages with
22 five birds are about 18 inches by 20 inches, which worked
23 out about 45 centimetres or 50, which does indeed work out
24 at roughly 450 square centimetres for each bird. She did
25 say that on day 109, page 17, line 16, which, as
26 Dr. Gregory confirmed but we could all work out for
27 ourselves anyway, is a fair bit smaller than an A4 sheet of
28 paper.
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30 Dr. Gregory on day 19, page 53, line 28, summarised the
31 welfare problems that he saw with the battery system. He
32 said, "It is a limitation on the ability of the bird to
33 express normal behaviour patterns and, in particular, those
34 associated with nesting, dust bathing, running, flapping of
35 wings, and running, walking, turning round, stretching both
36 their wings and their necks." And this is a limitation in
37 foraging, clearly. There is absolutely no way that the
38 battery system could come anywhere near the five freedoms
39 which are outlined by the RSPCA and other welfare bodies.
40 He also said that in any system where there is wire, i.e.
41 the wire cages, on the floor of the battery cages, there
42 can be development of foot problems.
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44 On page 55 of day 19 Dr. Gregory said that hens in the
45 battery system lay eggs approximately once every 28 hours,
46 and that they produced about 250 eggs in an egg laying
47 period of about 50 weeks. He said that the genetic
48 selection, the breeding of birds designed to lay more eggs,
49 and the fact that they are laying more eggs would have
50 health implications for the birds because it meant that the
51 birds had a very strong demand for calcium for their
52 eggshell production and there was a danger, or a risk, that
53 this put an additional demand on the skeleton of the bird,
54 rendering them weak. He said, "So weak bones can be a
55 consequence of high selection pressure for egg
56 production." He said that a typical sort of mortality
57 level for battery chickens was six percent. That was from
58 the point of lay, which was about 16 weeks of age, up to
59 about seven weeks of age. I think that is it on battery
60 chickens.
