In response to combined resident and representative advocacy over many years, recent work undertaken on new poultry welfare standards in Australia is important, as we now have a concrete proposal to ban caged egg production.
The Independent Poultry Welfare Panel has completed its work developing a new Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry and these standards would replace existing voluntary model codes of conduct and would ban battery caged eggs.
In addition, a cost-benefit analysis was prepared that reviewed options for introducing the new poultry standards and it recommended making the standards mandatory incrementally from 2022 to 2036 when finally, all caged egg production would be banned.
This work was done on behalf of Commonwealth, State, and Territory Agriculture Ministers and represents recommendations to those Ministers. They have not been finally adopted with the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry reporting that “The Commonwealth and States and Territories have worked together to agree to release the poultry standards, with each State and Territory considering implementation options during 2022, with further discussions by all Ministers in early 2023.” (link)
We continue to advocate for this change to occur in QLD as quickly as possible.
For anyone wishing to communicate their views to the QLD Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries, Hon Mark Furner, can do so via agriculture@ministerial.qld.gov.au