The timeframes for the country's egg farmers to phase out their battery cages are being reassessed
The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee has appointed an independent assessor to look at whether the deadline for egg producers to move their chickens from battery to the bigger colony cages is practical.
All battery cages have to be phased out by 2020 and farmers had a set date by which they had to have moved to the new system, depending on the ages of their battery cages.
The older the cage the sooner the farmer had to make the change.
The Egg Producers Federation, which represents New Zealand's 60 commercial caged egg farmers, says it doesn't have an issue with phasing out the cages by 2020.
But it says some farmers have only old cages - meaning they're being forced to change their entire farming operation within a couple of years.
NAWAC chairman John Hellstrom says that wasn't the committee's intention and it did not have good data on the distribution of cage age in the industry. He says he hopes a better mechanism for change can be found.
