Animal Welfare Impact of Change: Mixed
Environmental Impact of Change: Negative
Background
Conventional egg farms use cages to house hens in small groups. Animal rights activists have protested the use of these “battery” cages, as well as alternative “enriched” cages that are larger and have environmental enrichments.
Animal rights activists have demanded companies pledge to only serve cage-free eggs, although they have stated publicly that they don’t believe cage-free eggs are necessarily humane. The typical deadline of these corporate pledges is 2025. However, due to both supply shortages and cost, these pledges are not feasible. This has led to pressure campaigns to “shame” the companies for not meeting their past pledges.
What Experts Say
“The 223 million birds that supposedly need to be cage-free by 2025 [top meet corporate pledges] would come at a cost of $10 billion. It’s physically and financially impossible to do by 2025.” – Chad Gregory, CEO of United Egg Producers
Animal Welfare Impact of Change
A major study conducted by the Coalition for a Sustainable Egg Supply compared conventional cages to enriched cages and cage-free systems. It found tradeoffs between the different systems.
Researchers found “Hen mortality was much higher” in the cage-free environment. Cage-free systems had a lower incidence of foot problems with hens, but the problems were the most severe.
Why? The term “pecking order” comes from the fact that hens establish dominance. When thousands of hens are thrown together in a cage-free system, one effect is that there will be an increase in birds attacking other birds.
Environmental Impact of Change
Indoor air quality is worse in cage-free systems. The aforementioned study determined particulate matter in the air was higher in cage-free systems due to birds being able to move about a barn and kick up dust. Ammonia levels in the air are also higher in cage-free systems.
Because of this, workers in cage-free facilities were exposed to higher levels of endotoxins and airborne particulate matter than workers in conventional facilities. Additionally, cage-free barns “exposed [workers] to multiple respiratory and ergonomic hazards because they had to crawl and lie on the floor” to collect eggs.
More broadly, cage-free systems have a larger environmental impact. There is a larger footprint due to the additional space required per bird. Additionally, because hens move around a cage-free barn, burning energy, they consume more feed.
Food Safety
From a food safety perspective, cage-free eggs may carry additional risk. Researchers found that eggs from the cage-free barn floor “had significantly higher levels of microorganisms than all other types of eggs sampled.”
In a cage-free system, hens are able to defecate on the floor as they move about the barn. In a conventional system, the cages are layered so that feces drop onto a conveyor belt, which then removes the waste to a managed area.