Politicians and animal welfare campaigners have reacted with shock to film recorded secretly at eight of the Netherlands’ rabbit farms, where animals are bred for consumption.

The recordings, made by a group calling itself Ongehoord (unheard), shows rabbits with missing ears and other injuries living in cramped cages with wire floors. In some sequences dead animals are in the same space as the living.
Animal health professor Frank van Eerdenburg told the AD that ‘sick animals should not be with healthy ones.’
Regulations
The organisation also filmed the rabbit cages owned by Sjef Lavrijsen, who chairs the rabbit farmer association.
‘It is really awful. No-one wants to see this,’ he told the paper. ‘No farmer wants dead or sick animals.’ Lavrijsen said his farm meets new standards on rabbit welfare introduced by the government this year.
By 2016, all 91 rabbit farms will have to meet new requirements, including plastic matting on the floor and giving rabbits something to gnaw on, the AD said.