Nicolás Pauls makes appeal against egg production in Argentina
The musician and actor Nicolás Pauls joined forces with the international NGO Sinergia Animal and narrated a video of an investigation carried out by the organization with unpublished images that show deplorable conditions and animal cruelty on egg farms in Argentina.
"We should all know about the suffering, the mistreatment and the filthy conditions in which these non-human animals raised for food are forced to live. Let’s fight for change. It is time to start respecting animals and inform people about what they are eating and the injustice behind it", said Nicolás.
The images are shocking. The hens live crammed in tiny cages, some suffer from severe feather loss and others are injured. Dead rotting hens are not removed from the cages and remain there with the others who are alive. The cages and floors of the sheds are often covered in feces.
According to the Argentine industry itself, more than 98% of national egg production is in this type of system, which is called 'battery cages'. Each animal has a space smaller than a letter-sized sheet of paper to live and the hens cannot even walk or stretch their wings completely.
Scientific studies suggest that in this extreme confinement system animals suffer from stress and frustration for virtually their entire lives and have painful problems such as bone weakness and osteoporosis. Conventional battery cages are considered so cruel that they have already been banned throughout the European Union, New Zealand, Canada and several American states.
The film also addresses public health issues, such as the higher likelihood of salmonella contamination in production systems that use cages. The most complete study already conducted on the subject was done by the European Union. The results show that due to several factors - such as the high density and number of animals crammed into the same space - the risk of salmonella contamination is at least 20 times higher in cage systems - compared with cage-free systems.
"This reality cannot be ignored anymore. We need to spread this information and these images and ask ourselves if this is really what we want to eat. We need to ask ourselves if we want to be accomplices of this inhumanity", added Nicolás.
Sinergia Animal is considered one of the world’s most effective animal protection NGOs by Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE).
