Use your Consumer Power to set laying hens free!

By 2012, battery cages for laying hens will be banned for their cruelty throughout Europe. Yet, in South Africa, 22 million laying hens remain trapped in a space allowance of less than an A4 sheet of paper - for life! They are all debeaked so that if they peck each other in the barren, cramped confines of their cages, they won't do too much harm. Only 3% of laying hens are free range in South Africa. When this figure reaches 10%, it becomes possible to persuade authorities to ban battery cages.

A pale yolk does not mean a sub-standard egg.

Remember that the difference between Free Range and Organic Eggs lies in what the laying hens eat. Organic eggs have to come from free range hens that are fed organic food. This is why many of Woolworths' organic eggs have such a pale yolk. It is because only wheat-based chicken feed is currently certified as organic and wheat does not colour the yolks a deep yellow. Grass and lucerne cause the yolks to be deep yellow.  
  
To see life in a battery cage, please send for our powerpoint: Which Comes First, the Chicken or the Egg? Price: R25.00. Email Animal Voice to order your copy.

Congratulations Woolworths for banning battery eggs from all your stores nationwide!

If you wouldn't keep your dog like this, then speak up for pigs!  

Pick n Pay is the first supermarket to launch free range pork in selected stores in Gauteng (Fourways and Cedar Road) and it will soon be available in the Western Cape at Pick n Pay's Constantia, Gardens and Tokai stores.

However, 2.1 million breeding sows remain confined in metal cages (as shown in the picture) - for all of their four-odd years of life. Their piglets, reared in barren sheds on factory farms, become our ham and bacon.

Please insist on Free Range pork!

Most people have some kind of vague idea that cows produce milk readily on tap for human consumption.  However, like breast pumps, milking machines draw out the milk from inflated udders because the calves (or kids, in the case of goats) are not there to do it themselves.   Pouring milk into a glass, eating a tub of yoghurt or grating cheese onto a pizza all require a process of impregnation, gestation, birth and lactation.

So where have all the babies gone so that we can drink their milk and eat the yoghurts and multitude of cheese varieties? Well, calves - especially bull calves who will never produce milk - are ‘surplus’ to the dairy industry. While heifers will usually grow up to join the milk parlour, it is the bull calves that have the worst of it. They are either killed at birth, dumped at auctions or reared in tiny stalls for veal.

And, does the cow mind her calf being removed so she can give her milk to us? The answer is yes!

To see the plight of dairy calves, please order our documentary 'Saving Baby Ubuntu'. (Price: R39-90 This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) As a result of this documentary, Woolworths gave a directive to all its dairy suppliers that all male calves must be reared humanely until they reach slaughter weight at about 6 months old.

Some 10 million broiler chickens are slaughtered for their meat every week in South Africa. About one-third of these chickens have suffered agonising ammonia burns on their feet as a result of having spent their short six-weeks lives on faeces-saturated litter.

Please buy only Free Range chicken meat.

Routine mutilations such as castration and tail docking of lambs without pain relief has recently come under the spotlight as a new report by the Farm Animal Welfare Council in the UK confirms that these mutilations cause considerable pain and distress.

Did you know?

- Turning just one chicken into meat at the abattoir takes an estimated 14 litres of water. Multiply this figure by the number of chickens slaughtered annually in South Africa (761 million) and the lake of water that drains away from chicken abattoirs is 10.6 billion litres annually – or 29 million litres daily. - To turn just one ox into meat takes up to 9000 litres of water at the abattoir alone. - Cutting down on our meat consumption will benefit the animals, our own health and the environment.

Did you know?

About one-third of the chicken feet sold to the poorest of the poor are scorched black with ammonia burns from standing on filthy litter. Some are infected and ooze pus. They are sold to the poor at 50 cents a foot. Between Rainbow Chicken Ltd., County Fair, Tydstroom and others, some 10 million broiler chickens are slaughtered every week in South Africa. At 50 cents a foot, the poor are paying generously for chicken feet. We need to reconsider the myth that factory farming is a ‘necessary evil’ in order to feed the poor cheaply.

To learn more about how consumers can make a difference, please send for our DVDs: Farm Animals and Us and Let’s Ask the Animals. Price: R39.90 each. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Please support our endeavours on behalf of Farmed Animals. Please donate to Animal Voice and The Humane Education Trust

We are told that we have a choice between kind and cruel food and that the market is driven by our choices.

However, Compassion in World Farming (South Africa) believes it is every consumer's right to assume that the animal-derived food presented in supermarkets, has been reared and treated humanely from birth to death. Since farmers do not welcome visits from the public, consumers are unable to make informed choices.

While Vegans believe that Freedom of Conscience means eating no animal-derived food at all, Compassion in World Farming (SA) believes that in the era in which we are living, the most important first step we can take in our struggle for a sustainable and humane way of life, is to ensure that animals lead lives worth living, free of pain and fear. 

Please write to National Consumer Forum chairman, Mr Thami Bolani, and ask him to help achieve a 9th Consumer Right - namely: Freedom of Conscience. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

• 1991  After two years of lobbying,  free range eggs are introduced onto the shelves of Pick ‘n Pay and Woolworths.
• 1997  We play a role in the banning of live plucking of ostriches before slaughter.  Our magazine Animal Voice publishes an NSPCA photo of an ostrich  plucked naked before slaughter. Animal Voice receives lawyers letters threatening legal action by the ostrich industry and the NSPCA, with  the University of the Free State, establishes that the anticipation of being  plucked causes a sharp rise in cortisol levels in ostriches. The Ostrich  Chamber of Business draws up a code with The NSPCA that bans live plucking.
• 2001  We play a role in the banning of the Devil’s Fork in Kosher slaughter as well  as the rotating slaughter box. 37 hours of undercover footage by  Compassion in World Farming shows unrelenting violence and abuse in some abattoirs in South Africa. In some scenes, the ‘devil’s fork’ used in  Kosher slaughter hooks into the animal’s eye sockets. The Livestock  Welfare Co-ordinating Committee, including the NSPCA, reach an  agreement with the Beth Din for a nation-wide ban on the rotating box  and devil’s fork. The NSPCA later confiscates two 'devil's forks' at an abattoir that had not heeded the ban.
• 2001  We take Humane Education into 11 schools in the Western Cape Education Department’s Safe Schools programme. Caring Classrooms, our ensuing documentary on the impact of Humane Education on learner behaviour is launched in Brussels and receives international recognition. This  documentary has also been shown at film festivals in Canada, Equador and  Brazil.  
• 2003  At the invitation of the Department of Education, we officially participate in the process of integrating Humane Education in the SA Curriculum.
• 2003  Compassion in World Farming hosts the All-African Humane Education  Summit in Cape Town. Educators from 18 African countries attend. Mr  Ronald Swartz, head of Education in the Western Cape, is our key-note  speaker.
• 2003  Compassion in World Farming’s SA representative and editor of Animal Voice, Louise van der Merwe, is awarded Campaigner of  the Year Award by IFAW and Animal Talk Magazine.
• 2004  Woolworths bans battery eggs from all its stores nationwide. CEO Simon  Susman gives credit to CIWF (SA).
• 2004  Free range broiler (meat) chickens become available in most supermarkets.
• 2005  We expose calf cruelty in our documentary ‘Saving Baby Ubuntu’ and as a  direct result, Woolworths instructs its dairy suppliers to raise male calves  to maturity.
• 2005  Also as a direct result of our documentary ‘Saving Baby Ubuntu’, The Dairy  News, mouthpiece of the Milk Producers Organisation, alerts farmers to  the need to treat calves humanely. However, the treatment of calves remains an on-going issue.
• 2006  We publish South Africa’s first Kind Food Guide.
• 2006  Under the chairmanship of Dr Manie Schoeman, Parliament opens debate  on whether animals should be acknowledged as sentient beings in the SA Constitution. This is as a direct result of our supporters lobbying  Parliament for its acknowledgement of animal sentience.
• 2006  Teacher Vivienne Rutgers who has worked closely with us for four years to become a Humane Education Specialist, is invited to speak on Humane Education at the United Nations Forum on Sustainable Development, New York.
• 2007  Parliamentary Leader of the Opposition, Sandra Botha signs Animals Matter petition to the UN.
• 2007  Compassion in World Farming (SA) and Humane Education supporters collect more than 100 000 signatures for Animals Matter Petition and hand  them to Deputy Director for Animal Health, Dr Siegfried Meyer.
• 2007  Dr Meyer subsequently makes a personal visit to Compassion in World  Farming (SA) community representative in Khayelitsha, Mr Thabani  Mangcu and the Department of Agriculture in the Western Cape launches a  Humane Handling of Animals Awareness initiative in the Western Cape’s  informal settlements under the guidance of Mr Tozie Zokufa, Meat  Inspector (Veterinary Public Health officer).
• 2007  Our Humane Education readers are selected by the Western Cape  Education Department for its 100 Books in Every Grade project for 2008.
• 2007  Pick n Pay launched free range pork.
• 2008  Acknowledged as a role player in consumer affairs, CIWF (SA) is invited to address the ABSA Bank-sponsored Consumer Day celebrations held in Johannesburg By the National Consumer Forum.
• 2008  Compassion in World Farming (SA) launches Let’s Ask the Animals, a documentary on animal sentience by the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, in Xhosa.