Page 801 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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to having small flocks. We have to remember that integral parts of animal welfare concern not only basic access to food and water and prevention of illness, but also behavioural freedoms. That is what is lacking in a battery cage environment.
Many other countries and jurisdictions around the world have already banned battery cage egg production. They include Switzerland, Sweden and many parts of Austria. The European Union is in the process of phasing in a complete ban, which will be in place by 2012. This bill continues to take the ACT on its path of bringing ACT animal welfare legislation up to world’s best practice.
There is community concern about this issue. In September 2005, ORIMA Research conducted a survey of Canberra residents’ attitudes to egg purchasing and production. The survey found that 84.6 per cent of all respondents felt that it is cruel to keep hens in battery cages. Seventy-three per cent of all Canberrans surveyed felt that keeping hens in battery cages should be banned. This sentiment was agreed to by 81.7 per cent of younger respondents aged between 18 and 34.
These results show a large increase in the proportion of people who dislike battery hen egg production when compared to survey results from only seven years previously. A national survey conducted by People Data (Aust.) in 1998 showed that 65.1 per cent of respondents thought that battery cages should be banned. The increase shows that, as people become more aware of the issue, they are more likely to support a ban on battery cages.
The bill I have presented today is different from the legislation that was passed in 1997. That legislation had a tri-fold effect: to ban the sale of caged hen eggs in the ACT, to ban production of caged hen eggs in the ACT and to require labelling of all eggs sold in the ACT according to how the hens are kept. This had many complex implications regarding national sales regulations and competition principles.
The main problem with the 1997 act was that the inclusion of sales of eggs triggered a need for the unanimous agreement of heads of government from all states and the Northern Territory to an exemption from the federal Mutual Recognition Act. Gaining such an exemption is not impossible. Tasmania has legislation relating to crayfish sales which needed such an exemption and South Australia has an exemption for its container deposit legislation. However, in our case the states voted against the exemption of our no caged hen egg sale legislation; thus, even now, 10 years later, we are still unable to put the act into practice.
The 1997 act is still sitting on the ACT legislation register. It could commence at any time through the support of the states and the Northern Territory. The ALP supported the passage of this act, as I have already mentioned. I encourage it to take up the issue with state counterparts even now; then we could also go ahead with the ban on battery cage egg sales in the ACT.
But today’s bill is a simple bill. It aims to ban the keeping of hens in battery cages within the ACT. That is an achievable ban. The real impetus behind the bill is that Pace has to upgrade its ageing cages within the next seven months, due to the ARMCANZ decision, as I have previously mentioned. We know that there will be substantial costs involved with this. Rumours are circulating that Pace has been
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