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Food News 2009

posted on June 20, 2009

CALIFORNIA: Egg fight breaks out over chicken welfare law

By: Tracie Cone
Published: June 19, 2009
Source: Associated Press

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iqxxXCGMk2PGauO4--8jleUWkNnwD98TUH7O1

FRESNO, Calif. -- By one of the biggest margins in California's rich initiative history, voters decreed last year that egg-laying hens must be able to stretch their wings without touching another bird or a cage wall. But the details of the new animal welfare law are bedeviling egg farmers. Some are even rumored to be breeding hens with shorter wings, a tactic producers deny with a laugh.

And a newly introduced bill in Sacramento would require competing farmers in other states to adopt California's standards if they want to sell eggs in the Golden State.

California's egg producers say they don't know how to comply with the vague language of the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, short of allowing hens to range free. "We aren't about to invest millions without black and white standards that talk about stocking densities, height and width," Modesto egg producer Jill Benson said.

Benson operates three barns, each the size of a football field, that house 500,000 hens in wire cages. Industrywide, chickens are now provided an average space the size of an 8-by-11 sheet of paper.

The new regulations approved in November don't take effect until 2015, but the egg fight has already come to roost in the state Capitol, where lawmakers are being lobbied by producers to clarify the requirements and address the added cost to meet them.

"You still have an industry in denial," state Sen. Dean Florez, chairman of the Food and Agriculture Committee, told The Associated Press after a hearing this week.

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