Drones get a bad rap. Sure, they may be invisible sky predators dropping death from above onto unsuspecting civilian populations, but drones don’t kill people, people do – as the old saying goes. And look, anyone can use drones as weapons of war, as animal rights activists in Australia have shown by deploying a $17 000 drone to keep tabs on factory farmers.
The group, Animal Liberation, wanted to show that a chicken farm which sells eggs under a free range brand was, in fact, using giant coups to keep 85 000 chickens indoors all day – what we used to call battery farming. The drone itself is a six bladed hexa-copter with a high definition camera and 10x zoom lens onboard.
Under Australian law, because the drone flies at between 10-30m it’s perfectly legal to pass over someone’s land without trespass.
Amusingly, after Animal Liberation released the video below the owner of the farm claimed that the chickens were being kept indoors in order to be treated for worms. It’s just a coincidence that was the day AL members took to the skies.
This is pretty neat really, whatever your particular feelings about animal welfare, free range eggs command a premium prices and there are many proven cases where consumers have been lied to in the past.
(Via Care2)
