News
New Bill Against Battery Cages
On March 14, 2011, several MKs (Members of Knesset – the Israeli parliament) from different parties submitted a bill against keeping animals under conditions which "don't allow the animal to turn around, lie down and stand up, lie at a natural posture and stretch their legs, including their wings, and to do all this without touching other animals or the walls of the enclosure where they're being held." Should this bill become law, it should lead, among other things, to a prohibition of battery cages, still used by the Israeli egg industry, where hens are held in such density that they can't even fully stretch their wings. Such cages have already been abolished in 32 countries. This bill has been proposed due to the Ministry of Agriculture refusing to move towards abolishing the use of battery cages in Israel, instead striving to institute regulations that would make them perpetual. On March 16, 2011, the Knesset Education and Culture Committee discussed the Ministry of Agriculture's suggested regulations aimed at keeping hens in cages, only on a larger scale. As in its earlier meetings, the committee failed to approve the suggested regulations.Pamela Anderson for Animal rights
On March 9, 2011, Canadian actress and model Pamela Anderson visited Israel for some fashion shoots. Anderson, known for her support for animal rights, visited Tel Aviv vegan restaurant Buddha Burgers, where she took part in a media event aimed at raising awareness. Among others, she met Israeli MK (Member of Knesset) Ronit Tirosh, who initiated a bill aimed at curtailing the fur trade in Israel, and expressed her support of this proposed law. Anderson also referred to the current campaign in Canada against seal hunting for the fur industry.Anderson also talked about the need to remove battery cages from the egg industry, an issue she also worked to promote during her last visit. Then she met MK Alex Miller, Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, and urged him not to approve the Ministry of Agriculture's proposed new regulations, which aim to perpetuate locking hens in cages. Anderson said she's become vegetarian twenty years ago, and have recently also started removing eggs and dairy products from her diet. Copies of the PETA ad encouraging vegetarianism, which Anderson helped producing, were also distributed at the event.
Regulations Regarding Hen Imprisonment Discussed at the Knesset
On March 16, 2011, the Knesset Education Committee discussed for the sixth time the proposed new regulations regarding new battery cages for hens. It was the new Agriculture Minister Orit Noked's first appearance in this forum. Her predecessor, Shalom Simchon, did much to promote this so-called reform, but Noked said she hasn't yet formed an opinion regarding this matter. The Ministry of Education's position, in the mean time, remains unchanged.Should these new regulations be adopted, it means building new battery cages allowing an area of 550 sq/cm per hen (actually smaller than an A4 page), and aiming to upgrade those to "enriched cages" based on EU minimal standards, by 2022. During the meeting it became evident that there's no majority in support of the proposed regulations. This being the case, Minister Noked asked the voting to be postponed and added that things must be reconsidered.
Most of the MKs attending that meeting objected to the proposed regulations. Dov Khenin, one of the staunchest supporters of cage-free hen houses, told Noked in that meeting that battery cages are at odds with the Israeli Animal Welfare Law. He also said that abolishing such cages not only makes moral sense, but economic sense as well, and that the future of this industry lies in cage-free hen houses, as can be seen in Western European countries today.
Representatives from the Ministry of the Environment also took part in this committee meeting, and insisted that the reform should be carried out following international standards. Anonymous activists attended as observers, and we also held a demonstration outside the Knesset building, welcoming the MKs attending it.
Animal rights Day at Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva
Ben Gurion University at Beer Sheva recently enjoyed an "Animal rights Day". An Anonymous team arrived from Tel Aviv to represent our charity.
As opposed to Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, where Anonymous runs information stands regularly, Beer Sheva has only seen the formation of a regular Anonymous group quite recently. For most of the students, this was their first chance to meet the animal rights movement face to face and discuss the issues facing us.
Many in the audience had shown much interest and stopped to listen to the activists, who talked about the negative implications the animal food industry has on the environment, but mostly about the way animals are abused by that industry. We were pleasantly surprised by how many students supported our objectives, and how many have already been vegetarians, some even considering veganism. We were happy to see students approaching us on their own accord, without us having to call them over first. Some showed interest in doing something themselves, and we were left with a positive feeling regarding the chances of starting regular activities in Beer Sheva.
Demonstration in Passover
On April 14, 2011 dozens of Anonymous activists protested against animal abuse in the hen industry. In the spirit of the Jewish freedom holiday they demanded freedom to animals. A number of activists were confined to a small cage representing a battery cage - protesting against the plan to build new battery cages with public funding of 350 million Shekels (battery cages that do not allow the chickens as little as spreading their wings). Inspired by the holiday, and by Pharaoh’s command in the book of Exodus to kill each son that is born to the Hebrews, a trash can with hundreds of puppets of young chicks was placed in the front of the demonstrators, protesting the killing of male chicks in the egg industry. Above the trash can was the saying “Every son that is born…” (a phrase taken from the bible).The egg reform is halted for a year and a half due to Anonymous appeal to the high court of justice. We demand minimal standards for the keeping of hens, as is required according to the animal protection law. Following the petition, the ministry of agriculture has phrased a draft of new regulations, but these still allow for the caging of hens in battery cages. In addition, they offered to upgrade the cages only to the lowest standard allowed in the European Union, and this only in 2022. So far the education committee held six debates on the subject, each time legislators rejected the new regulations proposed by the ministry of Agriculture, and demanded better conditions for the hens.
The demonstration was covered by several of Israel’s major newspapers and television networks.
Unsupervised Experiments
In May 2011 a report of the state comptroller of Israel of the year 2010 was published, 70 pages of which are dedicated to a severe criticism against the council for animal testing - the body responsible for supervising animal testing in Israel. The council was formed 16 years ago, according to the law for the protection of animals, with the goal to reduce animal testing and encourage the use of alternatives. In practice, it has done nothing to fulfill its declared object, and performs as a rubber stamp authorizing experiments.Anonymous in Activism Festival
During 19-21 of May a festival for activism was held. The festival, which is held for its sixth time, is a good opportunity to meet different activists and organizations. Important aspects of animal rights got a wide coverage in the festival this year: all the food in the event was vegan, and Anonymous manned a stand throughout the festival. Activists of Anonymous explained about animal abuse in the food industry every day of the festival to hundreds of participants.
Chick life along the conveyor belt
Images and testimonies from a chick hatchery serving the meat industry
Hagai Cohen / Translated by Doron Greenshpan
In August 2010, three volunteers from Anonymous' investigations team visited a chick hatchery serving the meat industry in central Israel. This report is a first exposé including images and impressions gained from that visit. We can experience the first day in the lives of about 200 million chicks hatched each year in Israel in the meat industry hatcheries. It's a four-stop trip along the conveyor belt.
The point of view not taken
It's very hard to stand on the conveyor belt and impossible to rest. That's how each schnitzel starts its life – as a frightened chick led on a conveyor belt from the hatching trays to the supermarket checkout.R: "I don't really know why, but the hatchery is designed in such a way that the chicks are moved through a huge number of tracks and conveyor belts in a huge hall, thrown from one moving belt to the next, fall down and lifted up again. The speed of certain conveyor belts is so high that it's hard to actually see them, and they seem like a moving river of yellow plumage – of chicks shot from a 'chick gun' which packs them onto boxes at a fixed rate, or run around again and again along a circular belt. It seems as if someone was asked to design an evil obstacle course which won't allow chicks to stand upright even for a single moment of the first hours they spend in this world."
From the point of view of the just-hatched chick, who's looking for its mother's warm protected lap, the hatchery is a nightmarish trip through a real roller coaster, where it can't relax or rest for a single moment. The frightened chicks are moved on tracks at high speed, thrown from great heights from one belt onto another, jumping on top of each other, getting caught in their wings and thrown in the air, hitting the hard metal and slip through a large funnel which leads to the next conveyor belt system. All of them slip and fall, and in the meantime invest great efforts in trying to keep stable until the next obstacle. Their deformed body makes this task especially difficult, mainly due to their enlarged chest, which makes it hard to stand straight even without any obstacles around.
Some of the chicks are so injured that they can't even stand up straight, and so are left lying on their backs or stomachs. some skip and fall down. Both are not worth the investment in feeding them at the chicken coop, and so are thrown to large boxes to die a slow death, then thrown into the rubbish. No water of food is available to the survivors until they reach the coop after many hours, during which they've been packed tightly in boxes and driven to it in extremely crowded trucks."
First stop on the conveyor belt: Separation from the egg shells
A: "In the first hall, the chicks are separated from the shells of their eggs. Employees lift the chicks, ten or more at a time, tightly together, and throw them from about one meter high onto a box lying on the floor. There's a terrible smell there of rotten eggs, probably coming from the water washed from the hatching trays."
Second stop: Removing the "faulty" chicks
In recent years, the chick has unfortunately become the cheapest part of the chicken coop. Everything is more expensive, and therefore more important: the facilities, land, electricity, food and drugs. This is why 4 million male chicks of the egg-laying type are killed each year. There's simply no economic justification to invest in rearing them to become 'meat', compared to 'fattened for meat'-type chicks, which have been genetically deformed to grow at a much more economical rate. For this reason, the chicken meat industry prefers to remove any chick which may waste expensive food and drugs without eventually producing meat at the required rate. So millions of chicks are killed each year, even in the meat industry hatcheries, without anyone trying to find ways of killing them in a faster and less painful way."Y: "The selection is done by hand while the chicks travel on the conveyor belt. The 'selector' drops most through waving them around or stirring them by hand. Almost all of them fall just because the selector's hand hits them, or because they collide with other chicks which also fell. One female selector explained that she tries to see which chick cannot get up quickly enough once she's dropped it. Also, which one suffers from obvious bruises or bleeding. Once she finds such a chick (or thinks she did – since she only devotes a split second for each chick), she throws it into a box of "faulty" chicks on the floor. I asked her what's done with these chicks. She became quiet. A minute later she suddenly said: "There's nothing to be done with them."
R: Throwing a lame chick from a meter high (or more) is cruel by itself, but the speed required forces the employees to throw the chicks without even looking at them, and without even aiming. Some land outside the box and hobble around the hatchery, looking for some warmth. Some are being trodden. All eventually end up in the rubbish."
A: The "faulty" chicks thrown out of the boxes try to find a warm space to cuddle into, and seem very cold. We saw one chick who'd found some old tracksuit which someone had thrown, and tried to sleep inside it. We also saw some chicks who climbed (or thrown) on the edges of the conveyor belts and fell to the floor, also to be left behind. The saddest sight of all was a couple of hurt chicks who found each other on the floor and tried to cuddle together."
A: The "faulty" chicks thrown out of the boxes try to find a warm space to cuddle into, and seem very cold. We saw one chick who'd found some old tracksuit which someone had thrown, and tried to sleep inside it. We also saw some chicks who climbed (or thrown) on the edges of the conveyor belts and fell to the floor, also to be left behind. The saddest sight of all was a couple of hurt chicks who found each other on the floor and tried to cuddle together."
Third stop: Male/female selection on the "carousel"
Y: "A hatchery employee explained that since male chicks grow faster than female chicks, there are some coop owners who only seek males. On the night of our arrival they prepared the chicks to fulfill such an order, so the course the chicks went through was especially long, since it included the "carousel".
R: The "carousel" is actually a large circular conveyor belt revolving around two huge metal funnels sitting on top of each other, which lead to two different conveyor belts: on for males and one for females. There were eight selectors around the belt, and they casually lifted chicks out of the belt and less than a second later threw them high in the air into the internal or external funnels. One of them explained that they identify the chick's sex through its wing feathers. In a split second the staff stretch the wing and then use it to throw the chick into one of the funnels high in the air, sometimes with a centrifugal force and some other times forcefully enough to make them hit the other end of the funnel."
Y: "At any given moment, the selectors throw some chicks in the air into the funnels. Some are hit hard by the internal funnel wall before falling into the external one. All of them roll around and hit the walls while trying to find some form of foothold. Some manage, for just a few seconds, until another chick hit them, and then they are all quickly slipping down the funnel.
The employees
A: "I've already been to places where animal abuse is taking place on a large scale, but the atmosphere in this hatchery was especially depressing and scary. We managed to talk to a few employees, but most of them avoided any form of communication. They seemed apathetic... extinguished, didn't talk at all. It took me some time to realize they don't even talk to each other. I felt this was the sort of work that removed from them any form of feeling. It must also stem from the speed, which forces them to become mere nuts in the hatchery's machine. Above this, I felt that this way of treating tens of thousands of animals as if they were just inanimate raw materials caused them to behave like machines."
Fourth stop: packing
Y: "At some stage after selection, the healthy chicks are 'packed' in boxes according to their quality rating: Type A, type B etc... They are sent through the fastest conveyor belt in this place to a machine that 'shoots' them at a fixed rate into the box, until half of it fills up. The chicks seem stunned, and try to stabilized themselves despite the flood of chicks landing on their heads, trying to move up on top of each other in order to stand up and breathe. A few seconds later, the box is automatically pushed aside and continues being filled with chicks, which are naturally all pushed around once again."
R: "After that, the chick-filled boxes are piled up very high. It's obvious that at this stage, the chicks find it hard to breathe, and they are panting. They fight each other trying to get a place by the side of the box in order to get some air, maybe to peep out a bit. Every second some new faces appear at the slots on the side of the box, only to disappear once other chicks topple them over, pushing them down. In some cases, a chick putting its head out to breathe may actually suffocate, probably because of the other chicks that scrambled on its head.
R: "After that, the chick-filled boxes are piled up very high. It's obvious that at this stage, the chicks find it hard to breathe, and they are panting. They fight each other trying to get a place by the side of the box in order to get some air, maybe to peep out a bit. Every second some new faces appear at the slots on the side of the box, only to disappear once other chicks topple them over, pushing them down. In some cases, a chick putting its head out to breathe may actually suffocate, probably because of the other chicks that scrambled on its head.
The piled-up boxes await being loaded onto the trucks that would take the thirsty chicks, terribly over-crowded and suffocating, to the chicken coop where they'll be locked up until the moment they'll be taken violently to the slaughterhouse.
http://anonymous.org.il/art794.html
Anonymous for Animal Rights » Activism » Our Annual Activity Reports » News and updates for the first half of 2011
