December 15, 2022. A lot of egg types are available and can be purchased in the market – brown eggs, free-range eggs, pasture-raised eggs, organic eggs, but have you heard of cage-free eggs?
In 2020, the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Standards (BAFS) initiated the
development of the Philippine National Standard (PNS) on the Code of Practice (COP)
for Cage-free Egg Production, which means that layer hens - the female chickens who produce eggs - were not held in battery cages, considered to be among the worst cruelties endured by any farm animal. The Animal Kingdom Foundation (AKF), a non-profit animal welfare non-governmental organization, advocated the drafting of the standards.
This year, the Bureau promoted the PNS through the conduct of a webinar. AKF’s Mr. Irven Bustamante clarified the difference between cage-free egg production and free-range production. “Are they different? yes and no at the same time, cage free is specifically for indoors (providing minimum requirements) however, if it has an access to outdoors it is free-range”, he explained during the webinar.
To further provide information on the PNS, the BAFS issued a comic strip titled “Ang Kuwento ng mga Malalayang Inahing Manok''. This learning material aims to present the provisions of the standards through visual storytelling.
Isn’t this interesting? To quickly browse this comic strip, visit bit.ly/CagefreeEggComics. For other publications, visit the BAFS website at http://bafs.da.gov.ph. ###