New egg barn meets Prop. 2 rules, farm says

Issue Date: July 7, 2010

By Steve Adler

Responding to the mandates of Proposition 2 regarding animal agriculture operations, a Modesto-based egg farm has installed and opened the first “enriched colony” housing system for layer hens in the United States.

JS West President Eric Benson describes the benefits of the enriched housing and colony system at the company's Livingston egg-laying facility. According to Benson, the new system complies with the requirements of Proposition 2, which was approved by California voters in November 2008 and which addressed livestock confinement issues.

Proposition 2, sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, prohibits specific farm animals from being confined in a way that prevents them from being able to turn around, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs. It was approved by California voters in November 2008.

The new JS West egg barn near Livingston—built by Big Dutchman Inc. of Holland, Mich.—answers all of the concerns addressed by Proposition 2, said Eric Benson, JS West president, during a dedication ceremony for the new facility in late June.

“It is our hope that this barn will be an example to our industry, not just of Big Dutchman engineering, not just as enriched housing and colony systems, but as a necessity to move forward and take a risk and try something new that satisfies the needs and demands of today’s consumer and today’s society,” said Benson, who is the grandson of the company’s founder, James Stewart West. “So it is with this thought that we dedicate our new barn, our new experience, our new experiment in the future of animal welfare.”

Several months in construction, the $3.2 million facility will house about 132,000 hens. Benson said the company hopes to convert all of its barns to this new design within the next five years. The new enclosures each hold about 60 birds in a space about 12 feet long, 4 feet deep and 1.5 feet tall, and provide each bird with 116 square inches of space.

The enclosures, which are widely used in Europe as a result of animal welfare mandates in the European Union, also provide the hens with other features, such as a curtained nesting area for egg laying, metal perches and a scratch pad. Big Dutchman representative Terry Pollard said the systems promote a healthy environment for laying hens.

“The birds have the ability to move about freely while at the same time enjoy the comfort and safety associated with being a part of a colony group of birds,” he said.

The nation’s largest and oldest third-party certifier of farm animal welfare, American Humane Certified, accepts enriched colony housing systems as a humane practice for the housing of laying hens, said AHC vice president Tim Amlaw, who attended the dedication ceremony and announced the JS West barn had qualified for AHC certification.

“We are employing video monitoring of systems to study the behavior of the hens, as well as appropriate management of the system. Producers will be able to take quick action around any issues that impact the well-being of both animals and people,” he said.

AHC has certified producers representing more than 60 million farm animals through its independent, science-based program, Amlaw said.

“The leadership that you see provided by JS West is really indicative of what farmers always do and have done for hundreds of years in this country, and that is adapt to new systems of production that answer the needs of whatever consumers really want,” he said. “This system as we see it designed here meets those needs.”

Although the requirements of Proposition 2 won’t take effect for another three and a half years, Benson said that the company decided to begin the process right away. Neither moving out of state nor shutting down the egg-laying facilities were acceptable alternatives to the family-owned business, he said.

“We recognize that what happens here has little relation to national business or national scale, but this barn means an awful lot to our real business at JS West and to agriculture in general,” he said. “Animal welfare after all is a farmer issue. For as long as there have been farms, a farmer’s view is that animal welfare is essential to human welfare. If we can’t take care of our animals, how can we take care of our families, our neighbors and our customers?

“I believe this is a war of independence, a war of free will and a war of even independent capitalism, to decide whether a family business like this will be able to continue to operate in the most efficient way possible,” Benson said.

JS West, a 100-year-old family farming business, cares for 1.8 million hens and provides Northern California consumers with eggs. Third and fourth generations own and operate the family’s three farms in two counties.

(Steve Adler is associate editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at sadler@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top