What legislation is in place for the factory-farmed turkey in the UK?
There is to date no specific legislation to protect turkeys, as exists for some farmed animals (see The Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007) butprosecutions can be mounted using the Animal Welfare Act 2006, in which it’s clearly stated that causing an animal to suffer constitutes an offence. However, previous legislation has included clauses that could have been used to the animals’ advantage in a court of law, yet, for whatever reasons, very few prosecutions have been mounted based on the unacceptable and cruel conditions inside intensive farms. I was an expert witness on poultry (laying hens and broiler chickens) in the famous McDonald/McLibel case back in the mid-1990s. Mr Justice Bell found the conditions for broilers, broiler breeders and caged hens, as described to him, as cruel and unacceptable. FAWN firmly believes that were an organisation such as the RSPCA to prosecute a farmer and win the case based on the claim that system per se is cruel; the benefits for
