Survey of egg farmers regarding the ban on conventional cages in the EU and their opinion of alternative layer housing systems in Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

On 1 January 2012, conventional cages for laying hens were banned in the European Union (EU); all egg farmers must now use alternative hen housing systems. In total, 218 Flemish egg farmers were surveyed in 2013 to 2014 regarding which housing systems they currently use, their degree of satisfaction with the system, and how they experienced the transition from conventional cages to an alternative system. The response rate was 58.3% (127 respondents). Of these, 43 (33.9%) were no longer active as an egg farmer, mainly due to the ban on conventional cages. The respondents who were active as egg farmers both before and after the transition (84, 66.1%) mainly judged the ban as negative for their own finances and for the competitive position of the Belgian egg industry, but were neutral or positive regarding the general consequences for their own business. Most respondents' hens were housed in either aviary systems (47.7%) or in alternative cage systems (38.2%). When choosing a new system, the fit into the farm and consumer demand were the most important factors. Consumer demand was the main reason for choosing a system with free-range access. In general, egg farmers were satisfied with the system they chose, although this differs between systems. When asked to compare the alternative systems to conventional cages, alternatives were judged to be better for hen welfare and consumer demand, but similar or worse for all other aspects, especially labor. Egg farmers previously using conventional cages judged alternative systems more negatively than those who had no prior experience with conventional cages. Farmers who had experience with free-range systems judged these more positively than those without this experience, e.g., for egg consumer demand, profitability, and hen welfare. These results can possibly be extrapolated to other EU countries in which conventional cages were the most common housing system until 2012, and lessons can be drawn from the farmers' experiences when implementing other animal welfare legislation that may require similar far-reaching adaptations for primary production.

The Trade-Off Between Chicken Welfare and Public Health Risks in Poultry Husbandry: Significance of Moral Convictions

“…For all three cases, citizens agreed with the choice of a husbandry system that benefits chicken welfare at the expense of public health more often than did farmers. These results are in line with other studies that describe that, in general, citizens have negative feelings towards intensive indoor husbandry systems (Eurobarometer 2005(Eurobarometer , 2007Musto et al 2014;Van Asselt et al 2015 and prefer husbandry systems with outdoor access (Van Asselt et al 2015;Vanhonacker et al 2016).In contrast farmers often have negative attitudes towards outdoor systems (Gocsik et al 2016;Stadig et al 2016;Van Asselt et al 2015). Of the three cases, farmers most often agreed with the Campylobacter case (30%), which represented a switch from a conventional indoor to a conventional plus system.…”

“…Nevertheless, the conventional plus system is also an indoor system. The relatively strong agreement of farmers with the Campylobacter case may also be explained by the farmers' preference for indoor systems (Gocsik et al 2016;Stadig et al 2016;Van Asselt et al 2015).…”

“…Previous studies have shown that citizens and farmers have different views on (1) the preferred husbandry systems for laying hens and broiler chickens (Stadig et al 2015(Stadig et al , 2016Van Asselt et al 2015); and (2) the importance of various issues such as animal welfare and public health risks (Stadig et al 2015;Van Asselt et al 2015;Vanhonacker et al 2008Vanhonacker et al , 2016. For poultry husbandry, it has been shown that compared to poultry farmers, citizens have more positive views regarding outdoor poultry husbandry systems (Van Asselt et al 2015;Vanhonacker et al 2016).…”

“…It has been shown that farmers' decisions regarding husbandry systems are influenced by their farm characteristics and the possibility of converting to anothere.g. outdoor-system, risks of disease spread, and the economic consequences of a disease outbreak (Gocsik et al 2015;Stadig et al 2016). To elaborate on this, the public health risks of an avian influenza outbreak are small, because only a minority of avian influenza outbreaks are potentially a disease risk for humans.…”

Opinion of Belgian Egg Farmers on Hen Welfare and Its Relationship with Housing Type

“…The survey consisted of three sections; the majority of the questions were about either the housing system or the welfare of the hens. Most of the data on prevalence of the different housing systems and on how farmers experienced the ban on CC have been reported in Stadig et al [ 26 ]. The focus of the current paper is on the questions about hen welfare.…”