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FACTS ON
FORCED MOULTING
· Starvation force molting, widely practiced on egg production facilities throughout India, deprives egg-laying hens of food for up to 14 days and may be combined with one to two days of water deprivation, in order to manipulate their egg laying cycle.
· During a forced molt, hens suffer greatly and may lose up to 35 percent of their body weight. This practice of food withdrawal has been widely questioned throughout the world and is prohibited in Australia, the European Union, and the United States, under the American egg industry's animal husbandry program.
· Starvation force molting dramatically increases the risk of hens' laying salmonella-infected eggs.
· 22 states including Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh followed up with plans to implement the order, or to confirm that the practice is not used in their state.
· The order against starvation force molting comes on the heels of a growing movement against battery cage egg production and farm animal cruelty.
India’s factory farms confine 140 to 200 million hens in barren battery cages, where each bird lives within a space smaller than a single standard sized sheet of paper.
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This September, the Government of West Bengal has joined the 22 other Indian states that have directed local egg producers to cease starvation force molting of laying hens. The Director of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services for the Government of West Bengal has requested the directorate’s officials to ensure that the state's egg producers comply with the Animal Welfare Board of India's order to immediately discontinue starvation force molting regimes.
In March, the Animal Welfare Board of India confirmed that starvation force molting is a punishable offence under India's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, and ordered all egg production facilities to immediately discontinue the practice.
“We are grateful to the Government of West Bengal and we certainly expect that egg laying farms will comply with this order," said N.G. Jayasimha, manager of HSI's factory farming campaign in India. “Egg producers who continue to starve birds to induce molt must be prosecuted under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.”
What is Starvation or Forced Molting?
Molting literally refers to the replacement of old feathers by new ones.Starving hens for profit, by greedy poultry companies - to get them to continue laying eggs - is known as forced-molting. In nature, birds replace all their feathers in the course of a year to maintain good plumage at all times. A natural molt often happens at the onset of winter, when nature discourages the hatching of chicks. The hen stops laying eggs and concentrates her energies on staying warm and growing new feathers.
The egg industry exploits this natural process by forcing an entire flock to molt simultaneously. This is done to manipulate the marketplace and to pump a few hundred more eggs out of exhausted hens when it is deemed cheaper to "recycle" them rather than immediately slaughter them after a year of relentless egg- laying on a calcium-deficient diet.
To trigger the physiological shock of the forced molt, a University of California poultry researcher (Donald Bell) recommends the removal of all food for no less than five days and as long as fourteen days. Survivors may be force-molted two or three times, based on economics.
At any given time over 6 million hens in the U.S. are being systematically starved in their cages, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dr. Peter Dun, an animal scientist from Scotland, said hens are force molted in the United States "until their combs turn blue."
(Information from United Poultry Concerns, USA)
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Government of West Bengal finally directs egg producers to discontinue Starvation / Force Molting of
egg-laying hens
Sadism on your breakfast table
With input from Humane Society International
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Living to lay, laying to live:
Hens at a laying poultry farm.
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HSI urges anyone with information about a farm inducing molting by starvation to email this confidential drop box:
starvinghens@hsi.org.
Copies of the directorate’s order are available on request.
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