The Ministry of Agriculture had its server crippled for a few hours today after being bombarded with thousands of e-mails from animal rights activists, reports Pravda.sk.
The protest e-mails were about the ban on battery chicken farming that is set to come into force throughout the European Union from 1 January 2012.
The timing of the protest couldn’t be better, as agriculture minister Zsolt Simon will heads to Brussels this week for a meeting of agriculture ministers to give his assurance that the respective legislation will be incorporated into Slovak law. Egg farmers should now be converting their facilities to the new standard, but that could be a costly affair.
In their e-mail, the activists referred to the new regulation banning battery farming as one of the most important reforms for animal comfort to be adopted in the European Union. Only non-battery farm eggs should be sold in the Union from January 2012.
The people at the Ministry were not too pleased with this form of attack and had to use their personal email accounts for essential communication. At least the chickens should now enjoy a certain standard of comfort.