By Kim Chisnall
The SPCA is extending its blue tick programme that currently identifies two products, pork and eggs, as being free range.
Now buyers will be able to tell the provenance of chickens bred for the pot not just their eggs.
But the animal rights organisation SAFE says there is nothing humane about the way chickens are raised for slaughter, and the SPCA is sending the wrong message.
In the age old question of what came first the egg wins, but now the chickens time has come. They too can now qualify for an SPAC blue tick of approval.
“The better their life can be that's what we're about a good life and a humane death,” says Robyn Kippenberger of SPCA.
The SPCA has developed welfare standards for the growing, handling, transport and slaughter of poultry and will send out auditors to farms to test they are truely free range.
Currently only around five percent of all chickens sold in New Zealand are free range. At the moment all a producer needs to prove to classify their product as free range is that the chickens have access to an outside area.
The SPCA says it is not enough just to leave the barn door open.
“The type of bird they are they actually quite like to sit around so if you want a truely free range bird they have to be encouraged to roam,” she says.
The regulations encourage them outside by stipulating there needs to be at least 20 percent shade and access to food in the outside areas.
But animal rights group SAFE says SPCA's involvement in the scheme could confuse consumers into thinking that farming chickens is not cruel.
“People think that practice is automatically acceptable and ok when often there is some level of cruelty still involved. And I think that's risky cause it might give consumers the wrong impression,” says Hans Kriek of SAFE.
The SPCA says regardless of the rights and wrongs of breeding poultry for the table, the blue tick will at least give an assurance that its standards have been met.
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