Cages so small that they even prevent you from stretching your legs, frustration, injuries, dead specimens in microscopic spaces. I am the terrible conditions of rabbits raised for their meatfound in Italian and Polish farms.
They are denounced by a shocking new video investigation carried out by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). To turn the European spotlight on the issue of cage farming, the organization has released the material collected together with the coalition End the Cage Age coinciding with the start of the hearings in Brussels for the appointment of the new Commissioners.
The investigators observed and noted the suffering of rabbits crammed into overcrowded or individual cages, also unable to express natural behaviors of the species such as standing up on their hind legs or jumping.
They are stabled on floors made of metal mesh, responsible for painful soresskin wounds, hock lesions. There is nothing else, there are no materials to gnaw in order to file the ever-growing teeth.
All that’s left for the rabbits is chew the grates of the cages or the ears of their peers. The images show specimens with gnawed ears, unable to raise their heads, others lifeless. In one farm the rabbits had almost no fur on their bodies, probably due to parasitosis or an infection.
Two types of so-called “enriched” cages, examined by investigators, were also confirmed to be too small for consecutive jumps. Although they represent a step forward compared to traditional cages, these would not meet the needs of rabbits. Furthermore, on two farms, temperatures were so high that the rabbits were panting.
For animal rights activists what has been revealed is one raw testimony of “animal malaise” in intensive cage farming. This is where most of the rabbits transported and killed in slaughterhouses come from.
For the associations, these are not isolated cases observed in the two countries. These are the real conditions in which almost all “meat” rabbits are raised. In Europe, 77 million rabbits are slaughtered every year90% of which are estimated to have been cage-reared.
In Italy, in 2023 alone, 14.5 million rabbits were slaughtered. In the face of the chilling material collected, the associations continue to ask for significant progress prohibit the use of cages on all farms.
Several EU states, such as Austria, have already undertaken this path, demonstrating the feasibility of the project of abandoning cages once and for all.
More environmentally friendly alternatives are possible and already in use around the world. The European Commission must do its part and live up to its formal commitment to present the proposal to ban cage farming for all farmed animals as soon as possible” comment the animal rights activists.
With investigations and demonstrations for incisive political action, the associations reiterate that “”.
