By David Gotlieb
Members of the egg industry are crying fowl over a new documentary.
For one week, starting Oct. 25 at the SAW Gallery, Rob Thompson will film Pamela Meldrum and Eric Wolf living in a one metre by one-and-a-half metre cage. The footage will become part of an upcoming documentary on what he sees as animal cruelty in the food industry.
But the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency says the project doesn’t prove anything.
“I fail to see how paying a couple of people to sit in a rather artificial environment will prove anything,” says Neil Currie, the agency’s chief executive officer. “Perhaps as a side test they should put a couple of people in a small apartment, urinating in a litter box and eating canned food.”
The point is to “raise awareness rather than do a scientific experiment,” says Thompson.
He says Canadian farmers should adopt a system like that of Freedom Foods in England. If farmers pass random inspections and tests, they are allowed to label their products with a Freedom Foods logo, ensuring consumers know how the chicken was raised.
Critics like Thompson say the way most chickens are raised in Canada is cruel and inhumane.
They say many farms raise chickens in small cages without enough room to lie down.
Currie argues the cages are state of the art and keep the chickens healthy by removing waste from the living area.
The alternative to this method is free range, where chickens are allowed to roam in much more open spaces.
However, it won’t work in Canada, says Currie.
They could wander outside in the middle of winter and freeze to death, according to Currie. He also says that free range chickens are exposed to many more diseases than those that are kept in a barn.
Michel Charron, who keeps a small flock of free-range chickens at the Agriculture Museum on the Central Experimental Farm, says farmers don’t have enough space and money to raise their chickens free-range.
Most farms have up to 50,000 chickens.
“Chickens definitely seem to like being able to wander around, but on the other hand I like the fact that a dozen eggs are fairly cheap.
“I’m not a chicken,” continues Charron. “I don’t know how much room they need to be happy.”
Poultry producers make up the fifth-largest farm industry in Canada, contributing more than $1.8 billion to the economy in 1994.