The animal rights organization, Gaia, has again published video footage of animal abuse, this time in poultry farms in Flanders. The images were filmed between October 2017 and December 2017 on six industrial farms, according to Gaia, which also accuses supermarkets of complicity with the producers and charges that the Belplume quality label is a mere illusion.
The footage shows the birds crawling on the ground. “If chicken is so cheap, it’s because the animals pay the price,” says Gaia President Michel Vandenbosch.
The sector uses a type of chicken that is bred to produce a maximum amount of meat quickly and the animals are kept in overcrowded sheds, says the animal rights organization. Gaia urges producers to opt for breeds that grow more slowly and to give them better living conditions.
It also charges that supermarkets are jointly responsible for the animal abuse because they offer consumers ridiculously low prices.
Nine poultry farms in Belgium use the Belplume quality label, one of whose requirements is “care for the health and wellbeing of the animals”.
“From the film footage, we see clearly that in practice, this is not the case”, says Vandenbosch. “The legislation is insufficient”, he adds. “The 2007 EU Directive, which has been transposed into Belgian law, provides for some low minimum standards, but even these rules are not respected.”
The Brussels Times
