Page 1224 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 23 March 2010
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As I pointed out before, the code also supports activities such as debeaking of chickens with no requirement for anaesthetic, forced moulting and the control of light to maximise egg laying. You certainly will not see anything in the code about the natural requirements of chickens as animals. In any case, the ACT is very late in enacting these minimum regulations. We are really just catching up to other jurisdictions. There was national agreement in August 2000 for relevant parts of the poultry code to be put into state and territory regulations. It seems that the ACT is the only jurisdiction that did not do that. Under the Animal Welfare Regulation 2001, it merely did that for floor space requirements, not the other needs.
This, of course, allowed our factory egg farm, Parkwood, to continually breach the national code by using non-compliant cage doors which only have a small opening. I have pointed this out to Mr Stanhope on a number of occasions. The damage by the combination of rough handling and speed, small openings and weakened bones means that hens suffer broken bones when being removed and transported to slaughter. As an example of how other jurisdictions have moved ahead of the ACT, New South Wales has had for years the cage door requirements in its law, as well as many other parts of the code.
I would also like to make one final point about the Chief Minister’s claims that he leads the nation on chicken welfare and that he was the first minister to raise a phase-out of battery hens at the Primary Industries Ministerial Council forum. Actually, Minister Llewellyn from Tasmania tried to be the champion for that cause way back in 1999. That action led to the current minimal changes in the code regarding space and cage design. In addition, had the ACT taken the step to phase out cage egg production, it would have greatly assisted Tasmania in its efforts.
I would also note that the Chief Minister has said many times that the chickens in the Parkwood facility have slightly more floor space than the minimum. This does not mean that the ACT is leading the nation on poultry welfare. It does not make their cage doors any more compliant. There is nothing to stop Parkwood reducing the space for its chickens to 550 square centimetres tomorrow. Tomorrow it may decide it wants to squash more chickens into those cages, if that will work for its business. Our laws go no further than the minimums of the code.
In conclusion, as I said at the beginning, the Greens support passing this bill today. Potentially, if there is a good code of practice developed, it will be very good to make the new code enforceable in the ACT. These codes do not have to be national codes. The Animal Welfare Act gives the ACT the power to create codes of practice, as Mrs Dunne has said. As I said last week, a good use of this power would be enforceable codes of practice for pet shops, which could be based on the model code the RSPCA has already developed.
However, it is important for us to be clear that this bill and the poultry regulation that has just been tabled are about buying into the system of national codes that perpetuate factory farming. By painting it as a bill that improves the welfare of animals, the government does a disservice to the public and helps the industry to disguise the realities of factory farming. The poultry regulations we have now made enforceable have come about very late and they allow bad practices to continue. Just like the
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