FARMING: Improve lives of animals

The RSPCA believes that the current minimum legal standards for farm animal welfare are just not good enough.

For example, meat chickens can be housed in near darkness without natural daylight; hens that lay eggs can be kept in cages with less usable space than an A4 sheet of paper and no way of dust-bathing properly; pigs can be kept on fully slatted floors with no straw; dairy cows can be housed indoors all year without ever setting foot outside.

But we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change that.

The Government is drafting a new Agriculture Bill in anticipation of us leaving the EU, and it wants to encourage the public to contribute their ideas.

This is a fantastic chance for animal lovers to persuade the UK Government to include policies and incentives that will improve farm animal welfare in England.

If readers want to make a different to the lives of farm animals, they can tell the UK Government what they believe the future of farming should be via our action page at www.rspca.org.uk/farmanimalaction

Marc Cooper,

Head of Farm Animals, RSPCA