Greens Challenge Battery Farms To Open Up To Scrutiny

The Green Party is challenging egg producers using battery cages to open up their operations to public scrutiny and allow journalists to visit their factory farms.

Green Animal Welfare Spokesperson Sue Kedgley will be a guest speaker at the SPCA campaign launch tomorrow against the use of battery farming in New Zealand.

"It is time to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds factory farms in New Zealand and open them up to the media and members of the public," she said.

"Just as we are challenging Tegel to let journalists and some members of the public into their broiler farming operations we are also doing the same for the nation's battery egg producers."

Ms Kedgley said it was scandalous that an industry making food that all New Zealanders eat would not allow consumers to see how that food was produced.

Ms Kedgley said the test of any farming practice was whether the public would find it acceptable if it were carried out in public, for all the world to see.

"If the industry are proud of their operations, as they claim to be, then surely they will welcome the media in for a peek at their operations."

Ms Kedgley congratulated the SPCA for spearheading the campaign to ban the battery hen cage in New Zealand and said the Green Party would be doing everything in its power to rid the land of the blight of the battery cage.

Sue will be speaking at the SPCA launch which begins at 12.30pm tomorrow (Thursday) at Turnbull House.

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