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On November 30, 2022, Kayoko Natsume, a ward assembly member, asked a general question about animal welfare at a regular meeting of the ward assembly of Katsushika Ward, Tokyo. The question covered three items: the first was about TNR of community cats and the subsidy system, the second was about evacuation with pets. And third, she spoke about the introduction of cage-free egg feeding. Citing the trend of eliminating cage keeping in the EU and the Cabinet Office cafeteria’s cage-free program as examples, she said that Katsushika Ward should also work on this as part of the SDGs and set a good example for society. She stated “Cage-free chicken rearing…
A new children’s book “Someday under the Sky Sakura School Hikari Newspaper” has been published. This children’s book should be read by all elementary and junior high school students, or even adults. One day, Asuka met an injured chicken in a corner of a poultry farm.By saving the chicken, which was about to be disposed of, she learns about the reality of this poultry farm.What is the happiness of the chickens and what is our responsibility? ……Asuka was troubled and decided to write a newspaper and publish it. Amazon As those who have visited the Animal Rights Center’s website and social medias know, chickens die and are killed every day…
On Dec.10th, 2022, International Animal Rights Day, we conducted street outreach activities on 3 spots, i.e. Shibuya (Tokyo), Iwate and Shiga, to appeal promotion of animal welfare and protection of animal rights. In Shibuya, a seminar on “animal welfare and rights” was also given. Dec.10th falls on “Human Rights Day.” Every person has the right to live one’s own life as a human being. In the same way, animals have the right to live their own lives. We believe the issue of animal rights is also the issue of animal welfare, just as the issue of human rights is also the issue of human being’s welfare. In the seminar, Ms.…
In pig farms, animals die in breeding facilities more than any other places. They die not just because of miscarriage, but they also get slaughtered by hand by humans. Piglets are killed every day because they are unable to stand up, too weak, or too slow to develop. In this farm, piglets get smashed against the edge of the gestation crates, which results in slow and painful death. It’s also a common practice to kill them by injecting disinfectant, Pacoma, which causes blood coagulation in their heart. This method is not permitted per international standards as it’s not an approved usage of the infectant. Some also kill piglets by using…
Though it’s yet to be seen since we have two more months to go, 2022 will be a year of great success for the Animal Rights Center in light of animal welfare in the agriculture field. These achievements will carry us forward into a new era, but we’d like to first cover our history of dialogues with stakeholders in this article. Our history of Company Engagement in animal welfare In the era of Sustainable Development Goals(SDG), the Animal Rights Center has been working closely with corporations while hoping we can ultimately change their producers’ actions indirectly. As a part of our ongoing efforts to minimize animal suffering, the Animal Rights…
On November 8th 2022, Genki Sudo councilor raised a question at the diet session in regards to male chicks who get killed just a day after they were born. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) response to his particular question about the number of male chickens killed in Japan was quite intriguing: “We have no statistics to show how many male chickens are born and slaughtered specifically. That said, Japan Poultry Breeders and Hatcheries Association estimates there were about 110,000,000 hens produced in 2021 so I would guess there were about the same number of male chicks.“ Supposedly 110 million birds are born to just get culled but…
More companies agree with “cage-free eggs” initiatives. What is the cage-free egg declaration? It means that companies publicize their intention to switch all of their eggs to cage-free ones. This is being carried out by lots of companies worldwide. Companies publicizing the cage-free egg declaration are now more than 180 in Japan, the number being expected to increase in future. Battery cage rearing, a typical industrial livestock rearing method that cause serious environmental pollution, is considered so inhumane that it is being discontinued in international communities. For further details, see here “What is cage-free?” and “Definitions of the Cage-free Policy corporations should establish” *Kioritei(Shibuya-ward) A ramen noodle shop in Shibuya-ward,…
The Act on Welfare and Management of Animals stipulates, as a penalty, that to drain or weaken an animal by raising it or to keep it in a place where the density of breeding is clearly insufficient. However this regulation is not functioning and abnormally overcrowded rearing is rampant across Japan. While meat chicken farms are also extremely crowded compared to global standards, on this article we will explain the abnormal breeding environment of laying hens in Japan. Rearing density of Japan’s layer poultry farms The rearing densty practiced in Japan’s largest egg producer, (which went bankrupt and filed for corporate reorganization in 2022), is 285cm2 per bird. It’s 15cm×19cm.…
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer demand for cage-free eggs has increasing. Looking at the sales trends of other products, it can be inferred that consumer psychology has an impact. The psychology of consumers is that they want to eat something good at home because they can’t go anywhere, or they want to take in something good for their body to build their immunity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when people could hardly go out for shopping, food delivery businesses such as Co-op grew significantly. Last year, demand of cage-free eggs at Co-ops throughout Japanincreased by more than 100% over the previous year. (The demand has become twice as much as the…
Koichi HOSOKAWA, Professor, Japan Women’s University More and more people consider pets to be family members. The term “companion animal” is also becoming more common. On the other hand, abuse and abandonment of pets and ill-treatment in the pet industry are often in the news. If you kill or injure someone else’s animal, you can be punished under criminal law for damaging property. However, this provision does not apply if the animal’s owner does the same. It is a crime to destroy someone else’s property, and animals are simply treated as property. The crime of damaging property is punishable by imprisonment of up to 1 year or a fine of…
[The campaign ended when we made Toridoll Holdings stand at the starting point for animal welfare.]Hens are left in cages in Japan, while they are released globally, what does that tell us? On September 3, 2022, Toridoll Holdings Corporation(THC), based in Tokyo, Japan and running fast food restaurant chains such as Marugame Seimen (chain of noodle shops), announced on the website their timeline and stance for switching eggs from caged to cage-free. The announcement was released just after the global campaign for the protection of egg-laying hens was launched by Open Wing Alliance (OWA), a global alliance to free laying hens from cages with more than 90 member organizations from…
Ramen restaurant “Chukasoba Mugen” in Osaka officially announced eggs used in their restaurants are 100% cage free. Chukasoba Mugen which has been listed in the Michelin Guide in a row, only uses cage-free eggs from WABISUKE Co., Ltd. Unlike general large- scale cage breeding in Japan, this poultry produces eggs only from cage-free which is friendly to both people and hens. WABISUKE’s laying hens can bathe in the sand as much as they want, drink water, and eat at any time, 24 hours a day. Today, information on the world is readily available to anyone, and many consumers are concerned that animal welfare in Japan is much lower than in other countries. In spite of…
The court’s ruling of the bribery case, in which the former CEO of the leading egg company AKITA Foods had bribed the then Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yoshikawa to lower the standards of animal welfare, has become final and binding. They were both found guilty and rightly so. See here for related articles including an overview of the case. (As for the contents of the court’s ruling, please search news articles) We must not end with just 2 guilty people Is this the conclusion of the case? Having been witnessing absurdity of the poultry industry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) since around 2018, before…
Animal welfare progress by companies in Japan is far behind that of the rest of the world. This is apparent both in the Ethical Report Card of Companies that ARCJ participates in the rating of and in the ranking conducted by an evaluator for overseas investors. However, efforts for animal welfare are steadily progressing in Japan as well. Of course, what are driving this trend are the voices of consumers and citizens, and citizens’ groups like us who negotiate with companies with those voices on our back, and recently, consumer groups are participating in this movement as well. Let’s take a look at the situations of companies, though it is…
We’re announcing the Animal Welfare Award winners for FY2021. Animal Welfare Award (AWA) is an award annually selecting and giving thanks to companies that consider animals and work on animal welfare in Japan which is lagging behind the world in terms of animal welfare for livestock and aquatic animals. In the view of Animal Rights Center Japan that works to protect livestock animals in Japan, efforts resulting in the biggest impacts have been recognized. Please see the results below:
On 2022/4/7, at the House of Councilors Economic and Industrial Committee, Representative Kiyoshi Adachi brought up animal welfare as one of the challenges for Japan’s economy. Actually this is the first time that farm animal welfare has been brought up by the Economic and Industrial Committee. From this, we can see that the discussion on economics and business was completely omitted from the discussion of animal welfare in Japan. Mr. Kiyoshi Adachi cited “creation of corporate value” and “branding of Japanese food” as reasons for taking up animal welfare at the Economic and Industrial Committee. He asked how we should tackle animal welfare in the context of ESG investment and…
Following the investigation report after a scandal in the egg industry, their first information exchange session about animal welfare was held. As this investigation report mentions the importance of improving transparency of the government office, this is a great way to rebuild citizens’ trust in the government. As this article explains, there was a history where some officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) were entertained by Akita Foods where they were incentivized to lower the bar for animal welfare standards. As a result, the officers made decisions without consulting the opinions by the committee of experts. Despite this, the information exchange session was held behind closed…
Genome-editing technologies can cause animals to suffer. The technologies, however, have already been applied to animals. Ahead of other countries, in Japan, genome-edited red sea bream and Fugu, or blowfish, have been fully developed and are already on the market. Genome-editing technology and genetic modification technology are essentially the same in their meaning. Although regulations applied to such technologies are different depending on countries, some of them use the terms “genome-editing” and others use the term “genetic modification”. What these technologies do are adding, deleting, or changing gene materials on the specific spots of genome (the complete set of genetic material and information organisms have). These technologies are essentially the…
On March 18, 2022, Hotel Senkei, focusing on both animal welfare and SDGs, announced that the eggs used at the hotel will be 100% cage-free or free-range by 2030. They came to this decision after discussing with the Animal Rights Center Japan. Immediately after learning about the importance of animal welfare, Hotel Senkei began to use cage-free eggs for breakfast which are from the cage-free poultry farm in the local area, Kanagawa Prefecture. After then, they considered switching all the eggs used at the hotel and decided to go cage-free. The following cage-free policy is posted on the sustainability commitments of Hotel Senkei. Kaori Tsuda, the young proprietress of Hotel…
In March 2022, Japan’s largest egg producer Ise Foods, faced by financial difficulted, filed for corporate reorganization, drawing much attention since. Ise Foods keeps more birds in battery cages than any other companies in Japan, counting to as many as 13 million hens. While they have begun to introduce cage-free rearing methods in the United States, the pace has been extremely slow. Given that timing, they appear to have inevitably done so as some US states announced stringent regulations that would ban the trade of cage-reared eggs. There are many ways to describe Ise Foods; the largest egg company in Japan, a frontier of the low margin high turnover business…
The multi-partisan parliamentary group aiming for zero killing of dogs and cats has established a project team for amending the Animal Welfare Act. Since its launch on August 25, 2023, the PT has held 21 meetings to hear from stakeholders and deliberate on the direction of amendments. Out of these 21 sessions, however, only one touched on livestock animals, and just one on laboratory animals. Despite 1 billion livestock animals being killed annually, the issue remains far from the priorities of lawmakers. In the sole PT meeting addressing livestock, the discussions showed promise, but it is unlikely to expect significant amendments by 2025 at this rate. 17th PT: Hearings on…
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