Supermarkets ‘paying for game birds to be kept in cruel and environmentally damaging’ cages

Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Get our free Climate email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Supermarkets which boast of only selling eggs from free-range hens are buying pheasants and partridges reared in “cruel and environmentally damaging” cages, animal welfare activists have claimed. Wild Justice, a group led by television naturalist Chris Packham, says game birds released into the countryside for Britain’s £2bn shooting industry destroy native flora and fauna by eating plants, small birds and mammals, and the lead ammunition they are shot with accumulates in the countryside, poisoning wildlife. You can’t boast about cage-free eggs and then be party to selling game birds reared in cages.” In 2017 during an investigation into a Warwickshire game farm, partridges and pheasants were filmed in battery cages, with activists claiming many were stressed and in extremely poor condition. An Animal Aid spokeswoman said: “We have plenty of evidence of suffering – dead birds, feather-pecked birds, bloody birds, those wearing spectacles and bits, saddles and pads over injuries.” In 2015, The Independent revealed photographs of pheasants being heaved into a “stink pit” on a private Berkshire shooting estate.