We have received shock after shock and jolt after jolt these past few weeks, in terms of the cases of animal cruelty we have witnessed.

Rightly so, people were outraged at the treatment of Star, Gaia, the crucified pup and most recently, a shot dog in Siġġiewi. We have always said that you can measure up what a person is worth by how they treat an animal, and we will stick to that belief.

But we also have to question the issue of institutionalised cruelty to animals and that can perhaps be best illustrated by the living hell which battery hens are subjected to in Europe and other parts of the world.

And the fire has now been stoked by remarks allegedly made by Maltese European Health Commissioner John Dalli, who has been accused of “making a mockery” of the European Union’s animal welfare policy. Mr Dalli, however, has denied making any such comments and says he insisted that the new regulations are observed.

But heavyweight NGO Eurogroup for Animals expressed shock at Mr Dalli’s proposal to turn a blind eye to those countries which are not yet ready to switch from battery farms to other forms of hatchery, which are in line with the Battery Ban, which is due to come in as of January.

Mr Dalli said a solution needs to be found for 12 countries that are either not yet in line, or have not submitted any data. Malta is not among them; the countries are Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Spain and Greece.

Mr Dalli said his Commission was working on a plan to let non-compliant producers to put their “illegal” eggs on their national markets for production purposes and not for consumption.

But it all goes beyond this. To know the true horror of a hen battery, one must have to have seen, and perhaps more pertinently, smelled it. The conditions in which chickens are kept are horrendous. Some are lame, some are blind, some are malformed, and the heat and the light is just a constant pain for these poor creatures, many of which do not even look like chickens at all. It must be stopped, it is cruel, it is also unsanitary and it is just plain wrong.

But what are the alternatives? Free range is, of course, the best way to go. This allows hens to live in their natural environment and lay their eggs freely, as nature intended. But merely removing the cage aspect is not enough. Barn hens are also cooped up in their hundreds and thousands. The only difference is that they are not in a cage. Even here, sanitary conditions are dubious, as is the practice of cramming as many egg-layers into as small a space as possible. Apart from those farmers who do implement true free-range farming techniques, the rest of the methods are barbaric, cruel and just quite disgusting.