Green Party of PEI condemns factory farm egg producers

 Millvale - The Green Party of PEI is opposed to any change in legislation that will force small-scale egg producers out of business and is condemning factory farm egg producers for proposing that virtually all egg production be controlled by the Egg Producers of PEI.

Small-scale egg producers are allowed to keep 300 hens and sell their eggs at farmer’s markets or the farm gate but factory farm egg producers want this number slashed to 50 hens, a move that small farmers say will end the supply of safe, healthy eggs from farms where animal suffering is not a normal farm practice.

“The Egg Producers of PEI are 11 corporate farmers who produce more than 39 million eggs per year with hens kept in the most wretched and brutal of conditions,” said Green Party leader Sharon Labchuk. “Hens with the ends of their sensitive beaks cut off are crammed into tiny wire cages and stacked in buildings housing thousands of birds.  Each hen lives in a space smaller than a sheet of paper, without opportunity to ever go outdoors or experience natural social, feeding, and bedding behaviours.”

Labchuk said many scientists agree the shift in the last century to factory farmed egg production has been an animal welfare disaster, with the United Nations identifying farming methods that crowd huge numbers of animals into small spaces as one of the root causes of the bird flu epidemic.  She said factory farming is one of the nation’s worst polluters of air and water and a major contributor to climate change.

“The Green party very much supports the small-scale production of organic food as the best option for providing safe healthy food for Islanders, rejuvenating rural communities, and protecting our drinking water and soil.  We would dismantle the unsustainable industrial agriculture system and in particular work to quickly shut down factory farm egg production,” said Labchuk.  “There is no way hens can be kept in those inherently cruel concentrations camps without being fed a continuous supply of drugs and antibiotics, and by the time the industry is done with them, after only one year, their poor broken little bodies are completely worn out.  Factory farm egg production is truly one of humanity’s low points.”

Labchuk said the Green party would reduce the power of industry groups, like the Egg Producers of PEI, that try to undermine and crush small-scale farmers.

Contact:

Sharon Labchuk  902-621-0719  or  902-940-1262