USA TODAY Editorial: ….Animal-welfare activists have battled state by state for years to change that, taking on a well-funded egg production industry. As grassroots campaigns go, the activists have done well, but they knew the fight could go on for years and burn through tens of millions of dollars while animals continued to suffer.
Now, though, there’s hope for the hens because a strange thing happened on the way to the next skirmish. The activists and the industry reached a compromise, pending in Congress, that involves phasing in larger “enriched cages,” with a percentage of the industry installing new cages every six years for the next 18 years.
United Egg Producers President Gene Gregory and Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle began communicating through an intermediary. Pacelle went to the United Kingdom to see a facility that used “enriched cages,” larger enclosures with perches, nests and scratching pads that allowed the chickens to act like chickens. Though cages, even bigger ones, weren’t his first choice, Pacelle said farmers told him mortality rates were lower, egg production was up, the birds were happier and so were the employees working with them… (more)
