Design Sketches

SPCA Approved Eggs

The Blue Tick is an Accreditation Scheme run by the Royal New Zealand SPCA. It certifies animal products that are farmed to high welfare standards.

This humane certification programme provides consumers with certainty when purchasing food products in New Zealand.

The Structure of the Blue Tick standards:

The standards are based on the “FIVE FREEDOMS” which are:

1. Freedom from Hunger and Thirst: by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour. 
2. Freedom from Discomfort: by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
3. Freedom from Pain,Injury or Disease: by prevention, rapid diagnosis and treatment. 
4. Freedom to Express Natural Behaviour: by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and the company of the animals own kind. 
5. Freedom from Fear and Distress: by ensuring conditions and treatment that avoid mental suffering. 

The success of the above freedoms rests with those who are responsible for their care by providing:

• Caring and responsible planning and management 
• Skilled, knowledgeable and conscientious stockmanship 
• Adequate nutrition 
• Appropriate environmental design 
• Considerate handling and transport 

In 1999, the SPCA awarded Henergy as the first producer in New Zealand with their coveted SPCA Blue Tick.

The accreditation is audited each year, and Henergy continues to pass with flying colours. For good egg farming, it's essential to provide the hens with the best food, best environment and best care.

By purchasing products that carry the SPCA Blue Tick you are supporting animal welfare and helping to promote better farming practices in New Zealand.

http://rnzspca.org.nz/bluetick

Adopt an Ex-Battery Hen

An organisation called The Animal Sanctuary, located in Matakana (Just north of Auckland), fosters and re-homes battery hens. 

http://www.animalsanctuary.co.nz/adopt-an-ex-battery-hen/

"The Sanctuary often fosters battery hens that have come to us straight from the battery egg farm. These hens are less than a year old, but are scheduled to be killed after just one season of egg laying. Although they produce eggs for many years, all chickens regularly experience a break in laying, and the egg farmers don’t want to feed them while they aren’t producing."

What do egg labels mean?

As is well known these days, most eggs don't come from happy hens. Over three million hens live short and cruel lives crammed into wire cages. Eighty-eight per cent of the one billion eggs consumed in New Zealand are produced by hens that spend their entire lives on an individual floor space smaller than an A4 sheet of paper. 


So, with misleading packaging, standards and claims adding to shopper confusion, how can you avoid supporting cruelty?

To forestall government intervention, in 2006 egg producers agreed to voluntary labelling of eggs, and while this partly happened it is not industry-wide or mandatory.

Words like ‘free to roam', ‘cage-free' and drawings of countryside and sunshine on egg cartons leads the average New Zealander to think of happy hens dust-bathing and foraging in fresh air and green pastures-exactly what the egg producers want us to imagine-rather than the reality of large sheds confining tens of thousands of hens.

Shockingly, many ‘free-range' hens may never actually get to experience being outside.

The new colony battery cages, or ‘furnished colony systems' as the industry refers to them, will only add to the confusion. These positive terms are used to divert attention away from what, for most people, is the unpalatable reality of egg production.

1. Barn hens are kept at a stocking density of seven hens per square metre. This high density limits the hens ability to exercise freely.

2. There is no industry certification for ‘free range' in New Zealand. There are a number of variables between brands, including the required size of the outdoor range area, time flocks spend outdoors, and maximum number of hens per flock.

3. Most caged hens are beak trimmed, those that are not are kept under very low light levels to reduce feather pecking and cannibalism.

4. Hens may be beak trimmed depending on the certification standards applied.

http://safe.org.nz/egg-labels

Infographic by Safe NZ

--http://safe.org.nz/issue/factory-farming-layer-hens--

Container Perspectives

Case Study

Hall of Biodiversity, American Museum of Natural History 

                                   Ralph Applebaum Associates

The hall of biodiversity, the American Museum of Natural History’s first “Issues Hall”, was created to draw attention to the beauty and diversity of life on Earth and the crucial roles biodiversity plays in sustaining that life. It alerts the public to the ecological crisis we face and the part humans are playing in the Sixth Mass Extinction—the current massive loss of biodiversity. The hall’s purpose is to convey its one key message: the need to protect and preserve our planet’s biodiversity is the most pressing environmental issue of our time.

The hall contains a series of displays including a 2,500-square-foot walk-through diorama that depicts part of the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest, one of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems. The hall’s Spectrum of Life exhibit showcases the diversity of life resulting from 3.5 billion years of evolution. Over 1,500 specimens and models, from microorganisms to terrestrial and aquatic giants, are organized into 28 groups along the 100-foot-long installation. A timeline of the five previous mass extinctions includes examples of species lost, and a nearby display case features examples of extinct and threatened species, including the long-extinct Dodo bird and the threatened Siberian tiger.

The Hall is organised around four key questions: 

- What is biodiversity?

- Why is it important? 

- What are the threats to it? 

- What is being done and what can I do?  

As visitors are introduced to the twenty-eight major groups of life they are educated on the benefits and services we derive from them.

The hall utilizes many new technologies to create an immersive interactive environment. For instance, a regularly updated BioBulletin video features the latest in biodiversity research. Ecological biodiversity is explored at the Habitat Wall, a 60-foot-long, multi-screen video instillation, which tours the Earth’s nine major ecosystems and highlights the threats to each of them.

The 2,000-square-foot Dzanga-Sangha Rainforest is an immersive diorama that replicates a Central African rainforest, showing a hundred and sixty species of plants, animals, and insects. Within this diorama, digital imaging and environmental effects are combined with traditional techniques to create an advanced, vivid new kind of diorama. The diorama uses video and sound to re-create the ecosystem at dawn, at an elephant clearing, and degraded by human intervention along a road.

Located in central New York the Museum’s urban location is easily accessible to the public for a reasonable entrance fee. This exhibition targets a broad audience of all ages. School age children are particularly considered, with an active education program thought the museum and online educator guides for teachers.