COIMBATORE: Amid unease across the country over the ban on cattle sale in animal markets for slaughter, the Law Commission has recommended a set of rules to end the cruel practice of confining birds in battery cages.
The panel on June 21 released a draft on The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Egg Laying Hens) Rules, 2017 and The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Broiler Chicken) Rules, 2017, which states that it is “necessary to have a distinction between produce obtained from healthy farming of hens in cage-free environments and from battery cage farming.” This would enable consumers to select produce accordingly and would discourage battery cage farming, it added.
It also recommended that “no person should engage in either poultry or chicken farming without being registered with the animal husbandry department and the registration certificate should be displayed in the farm.”
However, poultry farm owners were unhappy with the recommendations. “Our country is not like an European country where the population is low,” said A K P Chinraj, president of Tamil Nadu Poultry Farmers Association, explaining that if at all the recommendations were implemented, farm owners would be forced to keep only 1,000 animals in the place where a lakh were earlier.