Day 089 - 15 Feb 95 - Page 13
1 Q. You can read fear in a chicken's eyes, do you think?
2 A. I think with a bit of experience you learn to know
3 whether they are comfortable or uncomfortable.
4
5 Q. I take it that in this paragraph, this provision 5, we are
6 not talking now about distress caused by physical injury or
7 illness or sickness ---
8 A. I believe that is the case.
9
10 Q. -- or discomfort; those seem to be covered by the first
11 three. I would like you to look at the fourth condition:
12 "Freedom to express normal behaviour - by providing
13 sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the
14 animal's own kind". That subline, again it is an
15 additional gloss on the original FAWC definition of April
16 1992, is it not?
17 A. Yes.
18
19 Q. I think we can understand "sufficient space". What do you
20 take "proper facilities" to mean?
21 A. The facilities, I believe, would be housing which keeps
22 the animals warm and dry and comfortable, and so the
23 housing is of a sufficient standard in terms of insulation
24 and water proofing and so on.
25
26 Q. It says then the "company of the animal's own kind". We
27 know that the animals in the wild live a solitary, and it
28 could be argued that the domestic cat is a solitary
29 animal. We have been told in this court -- no-one has
30 disputed it -- that cattle and pigs are social animals;
31 what about chickens?
32 A. I believe that chickens also are sociable animals and
33 they enjoy the company of their own kind.
34
35 Q. May I ask you then finally on this a much more difficult
36 question -- answer it, please, if you can, but only in so
37 far as you can -- what do you take to be the normal
38 behaviour of a broiler chicken which has been removed from
39 its mother before it ever sees the hen that laid the egg
40 and is thereafter brought up as a chick and a chicken in
41 the company of other broiler chickens in a shed? What do
42 you take to be its normal patterns of behaviour?
43 A. The normal patterns of behaviour of broiler chickens
44 would include eating, drinking, running around on deep
45 environment/index.html">litter, scratching. Those would be their sort of every day
46 activities which are conditioned by their environment to a
47 certain extent.
48
49 Q. Those chickens, do they have the opportunity to do all
50 those normal things, your chickens?
51 A. They do have the opportunity to do that, yes.
52
53 Q. Do they do them?
54 A. They certainly do. When they are young, like all young
55 animals, when they are newly hatched they run around a lot
56 more than when they are older.
57
58 Q. Again this is, I have no doubt, a difficult question but
59 please try to answer it. To what extent, if any, in your
60 opinion, are patterns of normality, so far as a chicken is
