by Clare Druce
Perhaps this reticence on my part had raised the editor’s suspicions, for whenever the word ‘rescued’ appeared in the article, it was in speech marks. Perhaps he assumed we’d stolen the hens.
We didn’t mind one way or the other what people thought, but did hope Sheila had spotted the article.
*
October 9th 1977: The Times newspaper featured our visit to Sheila’s hens. The journalist got a few things wrong, but the spirit of the article was sympathetic. He reported my description of the hens’ home-coming, how one little hen had straightaway pecked at the grass before falling on her side, yet continued to peck away, despite not having the strength to get back on her feet.
A visual aid for Parliament
In January 1978, just a few months after our first face-to-face encounter with caged hens, we produced sheets of paper measuring 19” x 15” (48 x 38 cms), representing the floor space in a typical battery cage for four hens. ‘It is argued that batteries for hens are an economic necessity. The same was said of the slave trade,’ ran the wording on each sheet.
We suggested our supporters send letters of complaint to the Agriculture Minister, John Silkin, and to their own MPs, using our cage-sized sheets to write on. When folded into four, it became painfully clear that the floor area allotted to each hen was considerably smaller than a sheet of A4 paper.
What couldn’t show up on paper was the slope of the cage floor, designed to ensure that eggs roll away as soon as laid. The birds must grip this sloping metal grid, day in, day out. With no exercise, claws get long (sometimes growing round the cage floor itself) and feet become deformed.
Neither could we indicate how the droppings fall through this grid, to obviate the need for manual cleaning. Often, moving belts between the tiers of cages carry the faeces away regularly, but sometimes the mechanism fails, and faeces build up under the hens’ feet, making a mockery of the argument that battery cages are hygienic. In ‘deep pit’ systems, droppings accumulate below the bottom-most cages for a year. If birds escape (as sometimes they do) they can fall into these pits, gradually sinking into the semi-liquid slurry, there to drown.
We gave our supporters the option of writing to Mr Silkin’s home address in London SW1, a pleasant area, well away from the stink of the battery shed.
*
It was depressing to see, a decade later, that farmers’ attitudes hadn’t changed. Ted Kirkwood, NFU spokesman on poultry matters, and a battery farmer himself, had this to say on Central Television when describing a typical day in the life of a battery hen, as he saw it : ‘…once a hen has pecked about she’ll walk to the back of the cage, settle down and have another rest. If she fancies an egg is in the offing she will stand up to lay…then she sits down again, and she can preen a little bit if she wants to do, but generally all they want to do is just sit back and watch the world go by. They’ve all the other hens in the cage, they’re all talking, you can tell by the noise they’re making if they’re happy…’. (1)
Compare Ted Kirkwood’s ‘observations’ with the following, a doctor’s eye-witness account of life on the slave ships, included in a report put before Parliament as part of the long struggle to ban one of the darkest times in British history: ‘The only exercise of the men-slaves is their being made to jump in their chains; and this, by the friends of the trade, is called dancing.’ (2)
Chickens’ Lib’s next investigation was to involve us in one of the strangest chapters in the entire campaign.
The nuns’ story
On February 1978, a stranger telephoned Violet. She’d been shocked to hear that an order of nuns was engaged in running a battery egg farm, just outside Daventry. Please investigate, she begged.
Violet contacted the Convent of Our Lady of the Passion, and spoke to a Sister Regina. An appointment was readily made for Chickens’ Lib to visit, a week hence. Only when Violet had hung up did she realize she’d left no contact details for us. We decided this omission might be to our advantage. Should the Mother Superior object to the plan, as well she might, our visit could not easily be cancelled.
*
The appointed day dawned raw and cold – typical March weather. I picked Violet up, and we drove to Daventry full of wonder at the concept of battery-farming nuns.
The convent occupied a large Victorian house in a pleasant rural setting, the scene now marred by two low, windowless sheds, set near to the house. As we made our way up the drive we detected that musty, sickening smell.
Sister Regina herself welcomed us, leading us into a large, sparsely furnished room, for coffee and biscuits. Around the walls posters boasted the Apollo moon shot, the rocket thrusting upwards, ever upwards, symbol of America’s limitless power... It soon emerged that most of these nuns were American.
We were told how they’d travelled to Britain from Kentucky fourteen years earlier, under the misapprehension that they’d be welcomed into a religious community (the finer points of the tale escaped us). Finding themselves mistaken, and consequently homeless, they had cast around for a modus vivendi. They eventually lit upon this large house with land, and a poultry feed company eager to set them up in the intensive egg business.
Sister Regina showed us some beautiful long-case clocks (she’d made the cases herself) and wooden toys she’d carved. We suggested that with such skills in evidence, she and her sister nuns might survive by means other than battery farming, but our suggestion fell on stony ground.
She seemed keen to talk, explaining that the nuns were Sisters of St Paul of the Cross, a contemplative order, founded in Italy over two hundred years ago. She told us how, when they first took up residence here, the nuns owned scarcely anything beyond what they stood up in. The room where we were having coffee had remained unfurnished for quite a while, save for the introduction of a few deck chairs and a gramophone. By good fortune, one of the nuns had a record of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. Settled in the deck chairs, they’d whiled away many an evening, she said, to the strains of this music.
“That must have been a bit depressing,” I ventured.
“Oh no!” she replied, misty eyed. “It was just beautiful!”
Time was passing, and we were no nearer to seeing the hens. We were beginning to suspect delaying tactics. Perhaps the nuns had done their homework since our phone call and now knew a thing or two about Chickens’ Lib. Clearly, we must assert ourselves. So we reminded Sister Regina we’d been promised a tour of the units, and (who knows how unwillingly?) she led us outside, and into the first shed.
By now we’d seen into battery units of different types, ranging from the ‘small’, holding around five thousand birds per shed, to the frighteningly large, housing sixty or seventy thousand, the tiers of cages stretching away into the gloomy distance. This one was of the modest kind – five or six thousand hens, at a guess, the narrow passages between cages lit by the usual low-watt, dusty light bulbs.
We’d not, of course, expected to find a good battery unit (for there’s no such thing) but with women in charge – nuns, even – might there perhaps be just a hint of mercy? As it turned out, no, there was not. This was a business, with hens as raw material and eggs the finished product.
These birds’ combs were exceptionally pale, even for battery hens, and we felt certain the cages were overstocked. The inevitable feeling of stress hit us, along with the appalling smell. Suddenly I was near to throwing up, and I thought afterwards how that would have served these women right. For the place was, literally, sickening.
We came away utterly dismayed, and angry with ourselves that we hadn’t remembered to bring a measuring tape. We’d definitely counted six or seven birds in some cages.
But it’s not the number of birds per cage that’s relevant, it’s the space allotted per bird, then suggested in MAFF Codes of Recommendations, and later dictated in law. Could these have been extra-large cages? We didn’t think so, they seemed absolutely typical of the size recommended for four or five birds, but rough guesses wouldn
’t get us anywhere. It was positive proof we needed, in order to lodge our complaint. On the journey home, we vowed that somehow we would get this disgraceful battery farm shut down.
and now to yorkshire
Violet caught red-handed
Shortly after Chickens’ Lib’s first visit to the nuns, the Druce family moved to Yorkshire; my husband Duncan was about to begin life as a music lecturer at Bretton Hall College, near Wakefield. Once settled in Yorkshire, personal visits or demonstrations in Daventry would be difficult for me, but we still needed those vital cage measurements, and Violet was up for another trip to the convent.
*
June 30th 1978: The Oxford Times reported ‘Freedom fighter gets the bird’ (How the press loved these little chicken-related jokes!) The article told how Violet had returned to the convent, this time with a woman friend from Oxford, armed with that all-important measuring tape. ‘They sneaked into the nuns’ chicken hut,’ ran the story, ‘and were promptly set on by a couple of irate nuns who ordered them out and called the police. Chief Inspector M.N. Cole of Daventry police said: ‘It is most unlikely that any further action will be taken by the police. We do not anticipate any criminal charges.’
Apparently Violet and friend were seen in a good light. Perhaps the Boys in Blue thought as badly of the nuns as we did.
*
July 19th 1978: Punch got in on the act, in jocular fashion. ‘Help Free Battery Nuns’, the article pleaded. ‘Militant members of the Sisters of the Cross Liberation Front are urging massive support for Sunday’s kneel-in and mass chant through the home counties in protest at the “inhumane” conditions inside Britain’s “factory” convents…But one Mother Superior has hit back at the allegations: “Our ten thousand nuns are quite happy,” she said. “They sit in their cages all day long and sing.” ’
*
On August 3rd 1978 Mr C Llewellyn, Private Secretary to the Parliamentary Secretary wrote: ‘Dear Mrs Spalding, …As the Parliamentary Secretary stated in the House on 24 May last in reply to a question from Mr Robin Corbett MP, the Ministry Veterinary Officer who visited the battery units at the Convent of Our Lady of the Passion found no evidence that the birds were suffering unnecessary pain or distress in contravention of Section 1(1) of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968. In his reply the Parliamentary Secretary also made it clear that he would not wish to give details of a private business. I cannot therefore comment on the report in The Northampton Chronicle and Echo to which you refer…’
Regarding cage space, Mr Llewellyn was at pains to protect the battery-farming nuns to the very best of his abilities, indeed almost to the point of desperation: ‘…stocking density cannot be related to welfare in any simple manner, and…is only one aspect of a complex situation involving such things as breed, strain, type of bird, colony size, temperature, lighting and quality of housing…’ Surely Mr Llewellyn is running out of ideas here: breed, strain, type – aren’t they the same thing?
We read his letter, and recognised our old brick wall, only this time with Holy Orders scrawled on it. To us, the situation was not ‘complex’ at all. It was simple. MAFF had an obligation to enact its own legislation, specifically drawn up to protect the welfare of farmed animals (1).
*
October 5th 1989: More than ten years later, and following many lively demonstrations by animal rights groups, the Daventry Express editorial column declared war on the nuns: ‘It is about time the nuns of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Passion sorted out their livelihood – and stopped being a source of provocation to animal rights campaigners, and an embarrassment to the Roman Catholic Church… you don’t have to be a farmer or a rights campaigner to understand the levels of cruelty in this type of egg production…how do the nuns reconcile their present activities with their commitment to the tenets of the church, of love, sanctity of life, and compassion – or does this only apply to humans? We weren’t aware God made this definition.’
Quite so. But there was yet more to come.
*
By now the nuns were under fire from MAFF too, but not on welfare grounds (no surprise there). Their birds were infected with Salmonella enteritidis PT4, the strain dangerous to people and, following Edwina Currie’s outburst of honesty in Parliament, a mandatory national cull of infected birds was underway. However, this Holy Order wasn’t taking orders from anyone.
The Daventry Express continued to keep its readers up to date with the feisty nuns. One way and another, it was a colourful tale, smacking of MAFF ineptitude, the nuns’ devotion to the battery cage system, a pop concert, a ‘love specialist’, and Belgian chocolates – with the grim thread of cruelty running through it all.
*
Giving it front page status, the Daventry Express reported how on October 4th, and in defiance of MAFF’s slaughter regime, twelve nuns, led by Mother Superior Sister Catherine, barricaded themselves into a 5,000 hen unit, telling MAFF inspectors they had no legal right of entry. Apparently they weren’t bothered about the five or six thousand hens in the other shed, since they were about to go to slaughter anyway, having completed their first and most financially rewarding year of lay. MAFF could have those, no problem.
*
October 5th: The Daventry Express revealed that professional security guards were patrolling the convent’s grounds day and night, protecting the nuns from ‘any type of intruders including the Press and animal rights activists,’ as Sister Jane-Anne told the paper. She also touched on the nuns’ fears, and plans for the future: ‘If we lose our chickens our income is gone. We are waiting for conversion work to be finished before we can start producing Belgian chocolates but that could take months’.
It seemed the years of tireless campaigning, plus a dangerous outbreak of salmonella, were at last paying off. The nuns were getting fed up, and casting around for alternative ways of remaining solvent.
*
October 11th 1989. The Daventry Express again: Chaos Comes to Quiet Order, ran the heading to the story, accompanied by two photos. We see the nuns leaving the battery unit after their sit-in. One is bowed down, apparently on the point of collapse. Well, they’d been in there for three hours solid, breathing in the foul air, perhaps experiencing something akin to the hens’ stress. Under the photo of the nuns, there’s one of animal rights protestors holding a huge banner aloft: MORE LIES. MORE DEATH. SISTERS OF TORTURE, it proclaims.
Further gaps in the nuns’ history were filled in by Bridget Dunbabin of the Daventry Express: ‘The nuns in the contemplative order, who take a vow of poverty, came from Kentucky in 1963 at the invitation of Cardinal Heenan,’ she writes. Could Cardinal Heenan have been the one who’d failed to make the situation clear? Had he inadvertently led the nuns to think they’d be taken care of?
Father Roger Edmunds, information officer for the Northampton Diocese, took up the story: ‘When they first arrived they really had a lot of difficulties setting themselves up. They went into battery egg farming without much enthusiasm but it was a way of supporting themselves without interfering with a life of prayer. The Catholic Church has no particular stance on the issue of battery farming, and prefers to leave it to the individual.’
Reading this, Violet and I saw red. This argument of individual ‘choice’ – we kept hearing it, usually from supermarkets unwilling to stop selling battery eggs. Nuns’ choice…consumers’ choice…what about the hens’ choice? Barely able to move a step, incarcerated for a year, maybe two years, they have no choice.
And there was yet more bizarre stuff to come. The nuns had found support elsewhere. A ‘love specialist’, known only as Carloff, guitarist in Nottingham-based band ‘Dr Egg’ (named after a Dr Egg who posted packaged hard-boiled eggs anonymously to the public, explained the article) had sounded out the nuns. He’d like to put on a charity concert, on their behalf. ‘The idea of a concert was floated around the Monastery,’ says Carloff, ‘and apparently a couple of young Scottish nuns said it was a good idea.’ There was a snag though
. The band had no transport (odd, that) and no ‘KI PA’ sound system, whatever that might be. But Carloff remained hopeful: ‘The nuns are apparently ringing round to try to find a contact in the music world who can help them,’ he assured the Daventry paper.
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October 12th 1989: Beneath the heading STAY OF EXECUTION the Daventry Express kept us up to date: ‘Judgement Day for Daventry’s nuns dawns tomorrow (Friday), when the battle to save their chickens from slaughter goes to the High Court...Mother Catherine, head of Our Lady of the Passion Monastery in Badby Road West, will be chauffeur-driven down to the court to witness what promises to be a bitter battle.’ Clearly, the nuns were being looked after well. Whether the industry was paying for de luxe transport to London, or the nuns themselves, was unclear. ‘Consultant in Environmental Health and Safety, Richard North, who is acting as spokesman for the nuns, said: ‘We expect it to be like David and Goliath. The Ministry will be armed with two or three lawyers. So far we have one. We have to get more guns…We’re going straight for the jugular.’
The article carried a picture of Miriam Warburton, Divisional Veterinary Officer for MAFF, leaving the monastery grounds. Clutching a bundle of paperwork, clearly battling against a stiff wind, she’d once again been sent packing.
In the event, the nuns lost their case and all the hens were slaughtered in a grossly cruel fashion. MAFF had no adequate plans in place to deal with the salmonella crisis, despite the fact that it had known for years that salmonella was rife in British laying flocks (2). Until Mrs Currie’s unwelcome revelations, MAFF had simply kept its head down, praying, we assume, that the problem would never come to light.