http://www.animallawreform.org/

Animal Law Reform South Africa, Johannesburg (2026)

09/10/2026

📣🐔 WORLD EGG DAY 2026: 24 AFRICAN ORGANISATIONS CALL FOR ACTION FROM SOUTH AFRICAN EGG INDUSTRY STAKEHOLDERS: DEGGLARATION & OPEN LETTER 🚨

Today, 9 October 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of World Egg Day.

The industry’s theme is “Protein that Powers and Protects.”
But we have questions: Who is being protected, and who holds the power?

Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA), together with 23 civil society organisations, has submitted a joint Degglaration and Open Letter calling for greater transparency, accountability and reform across South Africa’s egg supply chain.

The Degglaration sets out a shared vision for a food system grounded in the recognition that non-human animals are sentient beings with intrinsic value, and that animal, human and environmental interests are interconnected.

It identifies core values that should shape the rules governing our food system, including:
🐔 Animal sentience, intrinsic value and dignity
⚖️ Ubuntu and Interconnected Justice
🔎 Transparency and accountability
🤝 Social justice and equity
🐣 Diversity and Inclusivity
🌱 Sustainability and resilience

The accompanying Open Letter shows how these values are currently not being achieved in South Africa’s egg industry, and sets out several demands to relevant actors, to ensure that it does.

The letter sets out key selected areas that need addressing, including: the power imbalance in the industry; the hens behind the eggs and how the industry affects them; the information behind the claims and lack of transparency and accountability by industry stakeholders; and the people (including workers and communities) and environment affected by egg production.

We collectively call on egg industry actors to:
🥚 Make egg production methods visible on packaging and labelling
🐔 End battery cages through a binding phase-out and verified corporate commitments
⚖️ Centre animal sentience and establish enforceable welfare protections and standards throughout the hens’ life cycle
🐣 End the routine killing of male chicks
🔎 Release the full industry-funded NAMC study and support an independent transition process
🏛️ Examine barriers to fair competition and reform and address corporate concentration in the poultry and egg sectors
📢 Prevent humane-washing and misleading animal welfare and sustainability claims
👷 Protect workers and affected communities
🤝 Enforce the law and engage transparently

This initiative builds on years of civil-society advocacy, including for transitions to more sustainable and ethical food systems, constructive engagement with civil society,African and local standards, accountability, transparency, and access to information.

🌍 We thank all organisations for supporting this important initiative.

📄 Read the Degglaration and Open Letter:https://animallawreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/World-Egg-Day-Degglaration-and-Open-Letter-9-October-2026.pdf

08/10/2026

🐙 WORLD OCTOPUS DAY 2026 | KEEP THEM WILD, LET THEM FLOURISH! 🌊

What if, instead of finding new ways to farm wild animals, we found better ways to protect them?

Today, 8 October, is – an opportunity to celebrate these extraordinary animals, reflect on our relationship with them, and consider what our growing understanding of their complex lives means for how we treat and protect them.

🐙 Octopuses are remarkable, sentient beings. They demonstrate sophisticated problem-solving abilities, curiosity, learning, memory and individual differences in behaviour. Their capacity to experience the world challenges us to reconsider the boundaries of our legal and moral concern.
Yet, despite growing scientific recognition of their sentience and complex needs, efforts to industrially farm octopuses for human consumption have raised serious concerns.

⚖️ At Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA), we believe that the future of food production should not come at the expense of animal flourishing.
Octopus farming raises significant ethical, legal, environmental and food-system concerns, including:
🐙 Animal welfare and well-being: Confining these complex, predominantly solitary animals in intensive production systems risks serious suffering, stress and deprivation.
🌊 Environmental sustainability: Farming carnivorous octopuses could increase demand for wild-caught fish to produce feed, placing additional pressure on marine ecosystems and raising concerns about food security.
⚖️ Legal and regulatory gaps: Existing laws and governance frameworks were largely not designed with intensive cephalopod aquaculture in mind, raising important questions about how sentience, welfare, well-being and environmental impacts should be addressed.
🌱 Justice and accountability: Just because an industry can be developed does not mean that it should be. We must question who benefits, who bears the costs, and whose interests are overlooked.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?
At ALRSA, we are contributing to international efforts to prevent the industrial farming of octopuses through legal research, scholarship, policy engagement and collaboration.
📚 We participated in the 2026 Octopus Aquaculture Summit, convened by the Animal Law Program at The George Washington University Law School and the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and contributed to its collaborative report, Farming the Unfarmable, examining the scientific, ethical, legal and environmental implications of octopus aquaculture.
✍️ We are also developing scholarship provisionally titled “fArmed and Dangerous: Octopus Aquaculture and the Illusion of Ethical Sustainability”, critically examining the governance of this emerging industry and the legal opportunities to prevent its expansion.
🤝 ALRSA has joined Compassion in World Farming's global pledge, calling for action to prevent octopus farming and the expansion of harmful forms of carnivorous aquaculture.

These efforts reflect a broader conviction: we need laws and policies that anticipate and prevent harm, rather than waiting for new industries and systems of exploitation to become entrenched.

On , we invite governments, policymakers, researchers, organisations and individuals to rethink our relationship with these extraordinary animals.

💚 Octopuses deserve more than survival. They deserve the opportunity to flourish – in the oceans where they belong.

🔗 Learn about the Aquaculture Summit, report and films: https://www.law.gwu.edu/gw-animal-law-oxford-centre-animal-ethics-collaboration
🔗 Learn about the global pledge and campaign: https://action.ciwf.org.uk/page/199825/petition/1

Let's work together to ensure that the future of our oceans is one in which octopuses, and other aquatic animals, are recognised, respected and protected.

05/10/2026

🌱 WORLD FARMED ANIMALS DAY 2026 RECAP: ROOTING FOR CHANGE THROUGH SHIFT SA

World Farmed Animals Day, observed annually on 2 October, is a day to stand with the billions of animals raised and killed for food each year and demand better for their lives, well-being and dignity.

This year, on World Farmed Animals Day, Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA) hosted the first SHIFT SA gathering at the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch, bringing together 13 animal protection organisations from across South Africa that are working to protect farmed animals and transform our food systems.

SHIFT SA - the Strategic Hub for Industrialised Farming Transformation in South Africa - is a collaborative platform for organisations working to transform the systems that shape the lives of farmed animals.

Participants shared their knowledge and experiences, began mapping the farmed-animal protection movement in South Africa, identified gaps and opportunities, and discussed how organisations can work more strategically towards shared priorities and more effective collective action for farmed animals.

The gathering highlighted the value of connecting work across research and evidence, advocacy and campaigns, law, policy, regulation and corporate accountability. By working across these and other areas, we can strengthen collective efforts to address the systemic challenges facing farmed animals and advance meaningful change for animals, the environment and people alike.

Building a stronger, more connected movement takes time, trust and commitment. The first SHIFT SA gathering was an important step towards deeper collaboration and more coordinated action for animals, people and the planet.

It also reminded us that when we work together, systems can shift. And when systems shift, we move closer to a more just and inclusive food system in which farmed animals are recognised as sentient beings with intrinsic value as individuals, and treated with the care and protection they deserve.

04/10/2026

🌍 WORLD ANIMAL DAY | 4 OCTOBER 2026
The World Through Their Eyes

What if you saw the world through their eyes?

The hen confined to a battery cage. The elephant behind zoo barriers. The sheep aboard a live export ship. The lion in a small cage. The fish caught in a net. The pig restricted to a sow stall.

Each has a life of their own. Each experiences a world shaped by human choices: how we eat, what we buy, where we seek entertainment, and the systems we create and sustain.

This World Animal Day, we invite you to pause and consider their perspective. What does the world look like from where they stand—or swim? What opportunities do they have to move freely, explore, and live according to their needs?

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Together, we can do better.

At Animal Law Reform South Africa, our work is grounded in the principle that justice is enhanced where legal protection is available to all sentient beings. We work towards a world that recognises animals’ intrinsic value and protects their interests—a world where they can flourish.

🎥 Watch our video, share it, and help us envision that better world. Our choices, our institutions, and our laws can help bring it closer.

They think. They feel. They deserve protection.

28/09/2026

🥚 INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO INFORMATION - NO ROOM FOR SECRECY

Today, 28 September 2026, marks the International Day for Universal Access to Information. This year’s theme, “Upholding Information Integrity in the Digital Age: The role of access to Information in addressing Information Disorder”, highlights the importance of reliable information in an age where misleading claims can spread faster than facts.

Access to information is central to South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Section 32 of the Constitution guarantees the right of access to information held by public and private bodies, given effect through the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). This complements consumer rights to information, disclosure and informed choice under the Consumer Protection Act.

Yet access to important information is not always guaranteed.

In 2020, the South African Poultry Association (SAPA) commissioned the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC), a statutory body reporting to the Department of Agriculture, to examine the feasibility of transitioning South Africa’s egg industry from caged to cage-free production.

The study was reportedly finalised in January 2023. According to public statements and an executive summary, it found that transitioning to cage-free systems could result in significant costs and job losses.

But the full study has never been published.

The public therefore cannot scrutinise its methodology, assess its assumptions, or independently evaluate the evidence behind these claims.

Since January 2023, Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA) and other organisations have sought access to the study in the public interest through engagement with industry bodies, PAIA requests, complaints to the Information Regulator and public awareness campaigns.

More than 3.5 years later, the underlying evidence and full study remains unavailable.

When selective claims circulate while the evidence behind them remains inaccessible, this can contribute to the very information disorder that access to information seeks to address.

Reliable primary information is essential for consumers, civil society and policymakers to meaningfully scrutinise claims and decisions shaping our food systems.

Without access to the study or underlying evidence, meaningful debate about the future of egg production - and its implications for consumers, workers, the economy, the environment and the animals impacted - are compromised.

On , we reiterate that information affecting the public interest should not remain hidden from public scrutiny.

🔗 Read more and follow ALRSA’s efforts to access the NAMC study: https://www.eggssouthafrica.org/industry-body-engagement/

25/09/2026

HERITAGE DAY REFLECTIONS

Yesterday, 24 September, was Heritage Day in South Africa. This year’s theme, “Celebrating Our Living Heritage: Strengthening the Ties That Bind Us”, invites us to reflect on our interconnectedness.

At Animal Law Reform South Africa, we are asking: what does it mean to protect our living heritage, and whom do we include in that vision.

For us, the ties that bind us extend beyond our own species.

Our lives are intricately bound up with the natural world: with wild animals who share our extraordinary landscapes; farmed animals whose lives are shaped by human choices; and marine and other animals who inhabit our aquatic ecosystems.

Heritage is not only what we inherit. It is also what we choose to protect and what we leave behind.

As we celebrate our living heritage, perhaps we can ask ourselves: How wide is our circle of compassion, and whom do we consider worthy of care and protection?

From land to ocean, our lives are interconnected. Protecting our shared heritage means recognising our responsibilities to animals, people and the ecosystems on which we all depend.

15/09/2026

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF DEMOCRACY 2026 & JABULA MOOT COUNTDOWN!

Who does the law speak for?

Today, 15 September 2026, is the International Day of Democracy. This year’s theme “When every voice counts, democracy delivers”, invites us to reflect on how democratic values can be more inclusive.

Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA)’s founding value is that human rights are enriched - not impoverished - by including animals in the notion of justice. In the spirit of Ubuntu (“I am because we are”), we recognise that our humanity is bound up with the well-being of nonhuman animals and the ecosystems we share. That is why our concept of democracy must not only apply to humans, but extend beyond our species to the animals and planet our laws also govern.

On this day, we are reminded that democracy is about more than the right to vote. It is about meaningful participation and representation in decisions that affect us, those around us, and our shared home. It is also about demanding transparency and accountability from the institutions through which societies determine whose interests are recognised and protected.

Animals cannot vote. They cannot participate in public processes, approach a court, or argue for their own interests. Yet their lives are profoundly shaped by the laws, policies and decisions that humans make - often without considering them.

This raises urgent questions for the development of animal law: How should the law account for the interests of those who cannot participate in the systems that govern them? Who represents those interests? And what role can lawyers play in advancing justice for animals, people and the environment holistically?

On 17–18 September 2026, law students will come together at the JABULA Moot Court Competition at The University of the Western Cape, hosted in collaboration with Animal Law Reform South Africa, the Global Environmental Law Centre at UWC, and Blood Lions, to engage with these questions through legal research, argument and advocacy.

The moot will examine the regulation and governance of the lion industry in South Africa - exploring how animal welfare, conservation, administrative law and constitutional principles can address ethical and legal challenges in wildlife use and protection.

As we celebrate International Day of Democracy, we look forward to a creating a more just and inclusive democracy - where future lawyers are encouraged to question, debate and imagine how law can contribute to a tomorrow where justice is expanded, not narrowed, by including every voice.

11/09/2026

🥚 EGG-UCATION SERIES PART 3: THE FATE OF MALE CHICKS BORN INTO THE EGG INDUSTRY 🥚

🔎 When we think about egg production, we naturally think about hens. But approximately half of the chicks hatched to replenish egg-laying flocks are male. Have you ever wondered what happens to them?

In this instalment of Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA)’s Egg-ucation series, we examine an ugly and largely hidden part of the egg-production system: the fate of baby male chicks deemed “useless” by the industry.

Understanding where our food comes from means understanding the entire system behind it: including the industry practices and norms that shape animals’ lives and experiences, particularly those who remain largely invisible to consumers.

Male and female chicks are born into the same industry, but their journeys look vastly different.

🐔 Female chicks are raised to lay eggs. In South Africa, approximately 95% of egg-laying hens are confined in cruel battery cages.

🐣 Male chicks are generally regarded as having little to no commercial value to the egg industry because they cannot lay eggs. Moreover, because egg-laying breeds grow more slowly and produce less meat than chickens bred specifically for meat, raising these males is generally considered commercially unviable.

As a result, male chicks are typically killed within hours of hatching. Methods used in different parts of the world include being ground up alive in high-speed macerators, gassed or suffocated, or killed through neck dislocation. These chicks are alive and conscious when the killing process begins.

Recent research estimates that nearly eight billion male chicks born into the global egg industry are killed worldwide each year.

A small but growing number of countries have banned, or are phasing out, the routine killing of male chicks. These reforms often involve in-ovo s*xing technologies, which determine an embryo’s s*x before hatching.

South Africa currently has no specific statutory prohibition on the routine killing of male chicks. The general anti-cruelty provisions of the Animals Protection Act 71 of 1962 apply, while hatchery practices are also addressed through non-binding industry guidance, including the voluntary South African Poultry Association Code of Practice.

That Code describes gassing chicks with CO₂ or a mixture of CO₂ and argon as an accepted practice. It also characterises high-speed maceration as a “practical and accepted method” for killing and disposing of “non-saleable chicks.”

Instead of being recognised as sentient beings with intrinsic value as individuals, as South African courts, including the Constitutional Court, have affirmed, male chicks are deemed “useless,” discarded and “disposed of.”

In our reports on the egg industry, Laying Down the Facts and Scrambling for the Truth, ALRSA called for a legislative ban on the routine killing of male chicks in South Africa and investment in in-ovo s*xing research and development, as other countries have done.

Transparency and accountability are not only about what is written on the egg carton. They are also about understanding what happens before the carton ever reaches the shelf - and to whom.

Read ALRSA’s reports on the egg industry: https://www.eggssouthafrica.org/

Get Egg-ucated. Make informed choices. You have the power.

10/09/2026

JOIN THE CONVERSATION ON PUBLIC FOOD PROCUREMENT AS A TOOL FOR NCD PREVENTION IN SOUTH AFRICA

❓Can public food procurement be used to achieve a range of socio-economic objectives, including non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention?
Later today, a panel of experts, including Animal Law Reform South Africa’s Food Systems Reform Lawyer, Paula Knipe, will be taking an in-depth look at this topic.

💬Join the online webinar hosted by the Socio-Economic Rights Project at the Dullah Omar Institute, The University of the Western Cape, to discuss public food procurement and its potential contribution to the prevention of diet-related NCDs in South Africa. The webinar will explore how South Africa can use public purchasing power to promote healthier food environments, aligning with the constitutional principles of fairness, equity, transparency, competitiveness, and cost-effectiveness. It will draw on research on public food procurement and review the legal framework, procurement practices, implementation challenges, and opportunities to strengthen monitoring and accountability in the food system.

The panel is facilitated by Favour Akanbi of the Socio-Economic Rights Project and includes:
🎤Dr David Kabanda, Cefroht Uganda
🎤Paula Knipe, Animal Law Reform South Africa (& Union Against Hunger, South Africa)
🎤Tendai Mafuma, Senior Legal Researcher, Section27, South Africa

📅Thursday, 10 September 2026
🕖15:30-17:00 SAST
💻Online on Zoom

🔗Register https://uwc.zoom.us/meeting/register/U0bmO-d6TpCiS_clM1SYTg #/registration

Whether you are a policymaker, procurement and supply-chain practitioner, researcher, public-health and human-rights professional, civil-society organisation, food-system stakeholder, or member of the public interested in the prevention of diet-related NCDs - this conversation is for you.

31/08/2026

🥚 EGGUCATION SERIES PART 2: WOMEN’S MONTH EDITION 🥚

August is National Women's Month in South Africa. The 2026 theme “Empowered Women Empower The Nation” reminds us that access to knowledge, meaningful participation and informed decision-making enable us to make choices that can help shape a better future for ALL in our country.

Food systems are deeply gendered. Women have historically played significant roles in food production, household food decisions and care work, while often carrying a disproportionate share of the responsibilities and burdens within these systems.

For many South African households, affordability and access limit the food choices available. A lack of clear and reliable information should not create yet another barrier to informed decision-making.

That is why transparency matters.

In this instalment of Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA)’s educational series, “Egg-ucation”, which explores how different egg-production systems work and why understanding them matters, we are looking beyond the egg on the shelf to the life of the hen who laid it.

An estimated 95% of egg-laying hens in South Africa are confined in battery cages - small wire enclosures that severely restrict their movement and prevent them from performing many of their natural behaviours.

Hens instinctively seek out quiet, safe spaces in which to lay their eggs. They build nests, protect them and return to them.

Battery cages deny hens the ability to express these basic behaviours - not because there are no alternatives, but because systems of intensive production prioritise efficiency and profit over animal flourishing and protection.

The egg industry also has a distinctly gendered dimension. Female chicks are bred for a life of intensive egg production. Male chicks, unable to lay eggs and therefore regarded as having little economic value to the industry, may be killed shortly after hatching, including through cruel methods.

An empowered nation has the knowledge and agency to ask important questions: Where does our food come from? Whose lives are affected by the way it is produced? Do these systems reflect the fairer and more compassionate future we want to build?

Get Egg-ucated. Make informed choices. You have the power.

Animal Law Reform South Africa

09/10/2026

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