Hen welfare rule 'could kill egg sales'
By David Brown, Agriculture Editor
 

BRITISH eggs could be driven from the shops by new EU regulations to give hens more room to live, farmers said yesterday.

 Producers, who are already suffering large losses, will have to spend £550 million to alter their hen-houses under rules which take effect in 2002, according to the National Farmers' Union. Already 60 per cent of producers surveyed by the union had indicated that they would have to quit the industry, it said.

 The EU directive is designed to improve the welfare of hens in battery systems where birds are confined in cages inside artificially-lit sheds for all their working lives. It also offers improved facilities for hens kept inside barns and for free-range hens.

 Farmers gave warning yesterday that the extra costs would further damage a sector already suffering from a cost disadvantage with other European producers. In future, they said, processors would buy the eggs they need from countries outside the EU and this would virtually destroy the British industry. 

Tim Bennett, deputy president of the NFU, said: "Producers have found themselves in a no-win situation through no fault of their own. They are being overwhelmed with extra costs at a time when they can least afford it." 

Ian McHardy, who rears 80,000 laying hens in battery cages and free-range systems at Milnthorpe, Cumbria, said the new directive could cost him £1.4 million over the next 12 years. He said he would have to find an extra 28 acres for his free-range birds and build another six hen-houses. 

He said: "This is a crippling amount of money. I have coped so far with the increasing burden of leglislation but this could be the last straw." 

The NFU said it was pressing for welfare standards to be included in World Trade Organisation negotiations to secure a "level playing field in international trade". It was also seeking assurances that other EU states would comply fully with the directive.