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[sushiho]

Wow, just read some good news before heading off to bed - it is proposed that battery farming in England would be outlawed by 2012, and it looks like the government are going to push ahead with this legislation. That is surely a Good Thing

Comments

[boglin]

Hear hear. If you treated a domestic animal in the way that some livestock animals are treated you'd be prosecuted. Seems like a crazy system to me.

[uberredfraggle]

Oh I agree totally and was glad that Hugh F-W had a rant on tv about the supermarket price war and why was it not over baked beans instead of animals. I'm glad finally his protest and Jamies have made an impact and hope it continues further to improve the conditions of livestock animals.

[toxicpixie]

It's interesting that this legislation has been on the books for several years, but been pushed back in favour of other items many times; now that it's become a TV issue with 'celebrities' involved it has all of a sudden become unacceptable to delay it again.

Only affects egg farming, of course, and won't affect where the real meat of the issue lies (boom~tisch), which is intensive farming for chicken meat.

That said, it's a non-issue for me (at the risk of flames galore); so long as the meats decent quality I'm not fussed how it's produced (within a pretty broad set of tolerances).

Nathan, the Toxic Pixie

[sushiho]

It probably will bring a price increase - the reason why battery hens are raised that way is that it's cheaper to raise a large amount of hens in a small amount of space and keep them there - you don't need to own land for them to run around on, you don't need to make the land safe & fenced in from predators, you don't need to employ extra people to feed/round up the hens etc. Hence battery farming has lower costs than free range, and produces cheaper eggs

[threepymeepy]

Yep, it's perfectly possible to eat friendly food on any budget; it's just that a lot gets wasted on unnecessary excesses that come to be relied upon as 'essential'.

[tails_redux]

Personally I'd be more worried about the wheat price increases
Rice and lentils (and steel in a related tangent) are set to rise in price in Europe, as China has been doing some serious bulk buying.

[threepymeepy]

It is indeed a Good Thing, although it does depend somewhat on how they choose to define 'battery farming'.