Update—February 21, 2022: The Arizona Department of Agriculture’s public comment period is now closed—thank you to the hundreds of advocates who spoke up! We are now waiting for the Department’s decision on whether to finalize the regulations, and we will keep you posted.
Many egg-laying hens on commercial farms are confined in small, wire “battery cages” where they suffer for the majority of their lives. Up to 10 hens may be crowded together in one cage, leaving each bird with about as much space as a single sheet of paper.
In these farming systems, battery cages are stacked on top of each other in rows as far as the eye can see—sometimes as long as football fields! Birds languish every day in the waste falling from hens in the cages above them.
It doesn’t have to be like this. RIGHT NOW, the Arizona Department of Agriculture is considering regulations to ban this cruel practice, aligning Arizona with 13 other states that have already banned cruel confinement in some form.
