Video puts cage farming of chickens back in the spotlight in Latvia

Cage farming of laying hens is legal in Latvia, but is facing increasing criticism due to the conditions in which the hens are kept, and this issue has also been put on the agenda of Latvia's parliament, the Saeima.

The Latvian Television program "Aizliegtais panēmiens" ("Forbidden Method") has received a video sent by the organization "Dzīvnieku brīvība" ("Animal freedom") showing what are claimed to be the laying hens' cages at the second largest egg production facility in Latvia, "Alūksne putnu fermā" ("Alūksne bird farm").

It shows unpleasant footage. However, the company itself cast doubt on whether the video shows their chickens.

The Food and Veterinary Service (PVD), in turn said it does not see any evidence of violations at the company.

In Latvia, approximately 50% of laying hens – about 2.4 million birds –are kept in cages; in many other countries, the trend is against caged hens. 

On store shelves, alongside the egg size label, there are also numbers that indicate the conditions in which the hens that laid the eggs were kept – though how many people know about such information or check it is an open question. Companies are required to indicate this according to European Union rules.

In early March, "Animal Freedom" approached LTV with several hours of video material from the Alūksne bird farm. The footage, showing the conditions in which the chickens have to live and hatch, was shot by two filmmakers, who immediately raised the alarm about alleged non-compliance with animal welfare requirements.  

"Alūksne putnu ferma" is the second largest egg producer in Latvia with an approximately 20% market share, and is owned by the company "Agrova Baltics", which is listed on the Nasdaq Riga stock exchange.

Aivars Andersons, a board member of Animal Freedom, pointed out that the chickens shown have no natural living space, they are not able to spread their wings or stand up to their full height. In turn, to prevent the chickens from attacking each other, the tips of their beaks are trimmed. 

After reviewing the video material, "Aizliegtais panēmiens" approached the farm for comment. The company denied that it did not care for its chickens and even mentioned the possibility of artificial intelligence being used in editing the video. 

"You know that in the era of Artificial intelligence, any video can be made on any topic that you can type into ChatGPT," said the company's marketing director Viktorija Gulbe. "We take care of our chickens, starting with the food and ending with the fact that people say that eggs from Alūksne bird farm are very tasty. And eggs cannot be tasty if the chickens are sick." 

After the show sent the video to the company for review, the company responded that the birds seen in it did not match those kept in its cages even though the company's manager Hermanis Dovgijs confirmed in an interview with the programme that the company's equipment is indeed visible in the video, and therefore it can be concluded that at least part of the video was indeed shot at the farm.

"I can't confirm that this is our farm. In my opinion, this is not ours, because something like this is unacceptable, because my employees check the health of the chickens every day," asserted Dovgijs, adding: 

"This means that those who broke into our premises have specially arranged those [dead] chickens just to make the scenes even more disturbing."

The video received by the program was also sent to the PVD, which decided to visit the company. Its conclusion after an inspection was that everything is in order and no violations were found.