Ensure battery cages are phased out in NSW
Have your say on POCTA Regulations
The NSW Government is seeking feedback on the draft Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulation 2025 (new POCTA Regulation). With millions of animals impacted by these laws, this review is a critical opportunity to advocate for stronger protections—starting with a phase-out of battery cages.
Contributing to this consultation is a powerful way to ensure the government hears the concerns of Australians and ends battery cages for hens.
Submissions close 19 December 2024.
Image: Animal Liberation
Why is this review important?
While the new POCTA Regulation includes some positive steps forward, such as restrictions on certain cruel practices, it has failed to include a phase-out of battery cages—a key component of the national Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry.
How can you help?
You can help ensure the regulations better protect hens in NSW by lodging a submission today.
The NSW Government has opened this consultation process up to the public and is accepting submissions until 11:59 pm on Thursday, 19 December 2024.
Do submissions make a difference? Yes, the Minister for Agriculture is required to consider submissions and actions arising from submissions, and the Legislation Review Committee will also provide a report on the outcomes of the consultation. The report includes details on issues raised in submissions and how these have been addressed. This means that the draft Regulation may be amended following any issues or comments raised in submissions, particularly if they are received in large numbers.
Lodge your submission
Review the Draft Regulation and Regulatory Impact Statement.
Compile your response.
Submit your feedback and email it to pocta.reg@dpi.nsw.gov.au by 19 December 2024.
IMPORTANT: When lodging your submission, please include a clause stating if you do not want your submission published, or if you would like a portion of it to be kept confidential (for example your name and/or personal contact details).
Need help writing your submission?
Write your submission with the Advocate copilot tool
We partnered with Alive AI to develop an AI-powered tool to make the writing process easier.
All you have to do is:
Open the Advocate Copilot and click 'Start’
Click on the project ‘NSW Animal Welfare Regulations’
Select the key points you would like to include in your submission
Provide background information about yourself and any additional points you’d like to make
Wait while the copilot generates a unique submission based on the arguments you’ve chosen
Copy the generated text into a Word document (or similar) and edit the wording to ensure it matches your writing style.
Or use our key points
Ending battery cages is a core ambition for the Alliance for Animals. For this reason, we have focused our key points on including the phase out of battery cages in the new Regulations. Please personalise these responses for greater impact.
-
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulation 2025 (the POCTA Regulation). The review presents a key opportunity to improve animal welfare protections in NSW.
As the Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) makes clear, the objectives of the review are to ensure that:
Animal welfare protections for animals in NSW under the Regulation continue after 1 February 2025
Animal welfare legislation continues to be aligned to national objectives (such as implementing nationally consistent standards and guidelines for farm animal welfare)
The legislative framework for the appropriate care and welfare of animals continues to meet community expectations.
The draft POCTA Regulation falls short of meeting two of these three objectives by failing to include the phase out of conventional battery cages outlined at SB1.13 of the national Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry (the Poultry Standards).
Other states and territories are making moves to implement the phase out of battery cages. The Victorian Government has allocated $3.6 million to implementing the national standards and the WA Government has released draft regulations implementing all standards relating to layer hen housing systems, including the phase out of conventional battery cages consistent with the national standards. The ACT banned battery cages in 2014.
As a large egg producing state, it is essential that NSW comes to the table as well and regulates the phase out battery cages. Failing to do so, will undermine the national phase out and public confidence in the NSW Government’s commitment to animal welfare and national objectives of achieving consistent implementation of the standards.
Battery cages are an extremely cruel system of production that deny hens the right to express any of their innate behaviours. They are confined to a space that is less than an A4-sized sheet of paper and cannot even extend their wings. Scientific studies have consistently shown that battery cages lead to the highest rates of fatty liver disease and disuse osteoporosis, and the highest rates of bone breakage at depopulation when the hens are removed from their cages at the end of their productive lives.
This is objectively cruel and I am in disbelief that such systems are still permitted in NSW. It is deeply disappointing to me that the NSW Government is yet to commit to phasing them out.
The vast majority of Australians are opposed to battery cages. Social research by Kantar in 2021 found that:
81% of Australians were concerned about hens being kept in battery cages
87% said the use of battery cages impacts their choice of purchasing or eating eggs
77% support a phase out of battery cages
73% would feel more positive towards their state or territory government if it supported a phase out of battery cages
This sentiment was also reflected in process for developing the national Poultry Standards, which received over 167,000 submissions calling for the end of battery cages.
It is also reflected in consumer data indicating the market for cage eggs at the supermarket level is in sharp decline, now accounting for just 19.7% of volume and 15.7% of value.
Evidently, the community has spoken on this issue time and time again and the message is unequivocal – conventional battery cages are cruel and they must go. It is now time for the NSW Government to show it is listening by including the phase out of conventional cages in the new POCTA Regulation.