Israel’s Hens Need Your Help Now

We need your help – whether you’re an Israeli or a supporter of Israel. Actually, even if you’re neither. If you just care about animal welfare, it’s all I am looking for today.

The Problem: Israel About to Spend Half a Billion Shekels on Inhumane Cages

Israel is one of the last countries in the western world where agricultural industry is allowed to keep chickens in tiny cages. Egg laying chickens are crammed into cages so small they can never stretch their wings and hardly even turn around.

They are subjected to horrific conditions which include -

1. Being extremely crowded – 6-9 hens crowded into a small cage where their natural needs are denied.
2. Spending their entire life on a wire mesh which often hurts their feet and legs.
3. Cutting off their live-tissue beaks, twice during their short lifespan. This is done to prevent them from killing each other due to stress-induced violence.
4. Forced molting (preventing food and light for weeks to force their bodies into laying more eggs).
5. High occurrence of broken bones (forced to lay excessive amounts of eggs without moving, their bones are weakened). Obviously, no veterinary treatment.
6. Incomprehensible amounts of stress due to overcrowding, stacked up in tiny cages in smelly dark sheds.
7. Don’t even get me started on industrialized slaughter houses. If you can stomach the graphic description read all about it here.
8. Oh, and when breeding them, fluffy cute yellow male chicks aren’t killed instantly like in other places – they are just thrown into huge garbage bags, crushed to get as many chicks in, and then left to slowly suffocate to death the dumpster.

So, Why This Post about Hens? What’s Up?

The egg industry is a fairly cruel operation worldwide, but things are slowly improving. Battery cages have been outlawed in most of the Western world. That’s most of Europe, and California too.

Such changes are often difficult to achieve as the strong rich agricultural lobbies push hard towards maximizing profits at the expense of animal welfare. It’s the same in Israel, where we do have an extremely powerful agricultural lobby.

Yet, we may be on the verge of a change that could possibly effect the living conditions of millions of hens.

The Ministry of Agriculture has announced a reform in the egg industry. They are about to move the coops out of current kibbutzim and moshavim and centralize them into one area. Originally, the Ministry’s committee also recommended enhancing the space allocated to each hen, but guess what? The Agricultural lobby managed to reverse this decision.

The result?

The State of Israel is about to waste over half a billion shekels on building more crowded inhumane cages!

Yes, you read it right. That’s half a billion shekels of government funds.

Going into perpetuating misery and suffering of Israel’s millions of laying hens.

Israel is the only country in the world that invests half a billion shekels of public funds in building coops that have been banned for use in 29 countries around the world. Switching to open coops with no cages would place Israel on a par with the most economically, legal and ethically progressive countries in the world.

So, What Can I Do?

There is a lot you can do! Unfortunately, the campaign is mostly in Hebrew, but there is a petition going on here -

http://www.anonymous.org.il/petitions/batterycoops/index.php

You could fill it up in English too. The first four fields are the only ones that are mandatory. They are (in the order in which they appear): First Name, Last Name, Email, City. Make sure you uncheck the first checkbox otherwise you will receive their newsletter (in Hebrew). To make it easier on you, I used Google translator and created this image of the translated form:

Or, if you don’t want to sign the petition, could you please please please take a moment to email one or more of these people?

Ministry of Agriculture – The Minister is Shalom Simchon and you can write to him at shalomsi@moag.gov.il and CC his office at pniot@moag.gov.il

You can also write to the Knesset member of your choice (this includes Bibi Netanyahu). Full list of emails/fax numbers are in their profiles here:

http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mkindex_current_eng.asp

If you’re on Twitter, send the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs a tweet about this:

http://twitter.com/IsraelMFA

And of course, whoever else you think may help. If you’re not Israeli, maybe try and affect more pressure through your own government or through the Israeli embassy in your locality.

Also, please link to this post, or directly to the eggs campaign website at http://eggs.anonymous.org.il/. Email your friends about it. Tweet about it. Post it to your Facebook stream. Let’s get the word out and fast, before it’s too later and half a billion shekels goes into increasing the suffering of hens.

Yes. I know. They’re “just” chickens. We have more serious issues to deal with. There are people suffering in Gaza. In Sderot. Whatever. The list goes on. But here you actually have a chance to make a difference. To help millions of innocent animals and alleviate insufferable torture. Please. It’s only a couple of minutes of your time and it’ll help you enjoy your next omelette more.

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