DxE: These animals deserve to have their voices heard and by entering this exploitation facility, our goal is to shine light on their experiences and be allies in their struggle against speciesism.
HARRIET BREWIS: ‘Animal rights activists have exposed horrifying conditions at a chicken farm that supplies major supermarkets including Sainbury’s, Tesco and Morrison’s. Members of Brighton-based group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) stormed Hoads Farm in East Sussex yesterday, revealing squalid and cramped conditions scattered with what appear to be rotting hen corpses.
Around 150 activists sporting protective gear marched on the chicken enclosures, demanding the release of 100 hens. Some nine hours after they entered the farm, they were filmed leaving cradling 50 “liberated” chickens in their arms. The rescued birds have since been filmed recovering in the DxE members’ homes…
Ethical food label RSPCA Assured said it was suspending Hoads Farm’s welfare accreditation while it “urgently investigates” conditions at the previously certified farm. It said in a statement to DxE, shared with the Standard: “We have very serious concerns about some of the hens and the conditions shown. Any allegations of poor welfare issues on RSPCA Assured certified farms are taken extremely seriously.” The country’s top supermarkets have sold so-called “free range” eggs from the farm for years, at around £2 for a box of six…
DxE said its members had visited the farm on numerous occasions over the past few months, each time finding hens that were “visibly infected”, with decomposing dead birds left lying in the barns.” An investigator said: “We visited Hoads Farm multiple times over 6 months. Many of the hens’ cloacae, from which their eggs are laid, were visibly infected, bleeding and swollen from forced overproduction. “In the disease-ridden conditions, many piles of dead birds were found in the walkways among the living hens, and each time that we visited we found the same and new bodies decomposing”…
Another spokeswoman from the group said: “We have taken action today that some may see as radical, but our actions must match the severity of what takes place behind those walls. “These animals deserve to have their voices heard and by entering this exploitation facility, our goal is to shine light on their experiences and be allies in their struggle against speciesism”.’ SOURCE…
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