Activists hail ‘landmark’ reforms to animal welfare

Labour plans may spare millions of pigs agonising deaths

- JANE DALTON

Activists are celebrating “landmark” animal welfare reforms that could spare millions of animals from being gassed to death or suffering in cramped cages while being farmed for their meat, eggs or fur.

In its animal welfare strategy, whose provisions have been branded “the most ambitious welfare reforms in a generation”, the government has set out its plan for an overhaul of the legislation that covers the way that farm animals, pets and wildlife are treated.

Campaigners say that more than 9 million pigs every year could be spared an agonising death thanks to the proposal to outlaw the use of carbon dioxide chambers. Farmers will be forced to phase out farrowing crates for pigs and colony cages for laying hens - which both provide cramped conditions that stop the animals from moving about naturally.

The strategy also proposes the introduction of “humane slaughter requirements for farmed fish to spare them avoidable pain”, while proposals to promote the use of slow-growing meat-chicken breeds are designed to benefit the 1.1 billion so-called “frankenchicken” broilers genetically engineered each year to balloon so rapidly that their limbs and organs fail.