CRACKING OPEN THE CAGE-FREE MYTH

Despite all major UK supermarkets and food companies committing to going cage-free for all of their eggs by 2025, we know that moving millions of hens from colony cages into large, crowded barns or free-range farms WILL NOT give them a ‘happy life’.  

It’s time to look past the misleading cage-free marketing that shows full-feathered hens happily clucking around in open fields and expose cage-free as the ‘high-welfare’ lie that it is. Cage-free eggs are eggs laid by hens who have been farmed in cage-free ‘systems’. In the UK, this means hens who are kept in barns, free-range or organic systems and not in ‘enriched’ colony cages. Currently, more than 70% of the UK’s eggs are cage-free, and around 30% come from hens kept in 'enriched' colony cages.

From 2025, most UK supermarkets and food companies have committed to stop selling eggs and egg products from hens kept in cages. Several supermarkets, such as Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury's and Morrisons, already exclusively sell cage-free eggs.

What is the difference between cage-free and free-range?

Cage-free simply means that hens are not kept in cages. It can mean they are kept in barns or free-range ‘systems’. To be considered cage-free, hens must be kept in an environment free from cages, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be free-range. They can be kept in barns, with up to 16,000 hens crammed into one shed in both barn and free-range farms and nine hens allowed per square metre. Hens kept in ‘barn’ farms don’t have to have access to the outside.

For eggs to be termed 'free-range', they must have continuous daytime access to outside runs, which are ‘mainly covered with vegetation’ with a maximum stocking density of 2,500 birds per hectare. The Lion Quality Code of Practice, which assures more than 90% of UK eggs, stipulates a pitiful minimum of one pophole per 600 birds which must be open for eight hours daily to allow access to the outside.

Consumers often consider free-range the most ‘ethical’ option due to the industry’s insidious marketing featuring happy hens clucking around in open fields. Organic also comes under free-range and cage-free but with minimal additional space requirements. Organic farms are often still intensive, which cram in up to six hens per square metre and have up to 3,000 birds living in one shed!

What will happen to caged hens?

As supermarkets and food groups vow to stop selling caged eggs, colony cage farms are being phased out. Due to logistics related to space and cost, the vast majority of these cage farms are expected to transition to barn farms, and the number of free-range hens is expected to remain broadly the same.

However, because this is a voluntary commitment and not legislation, millions of hens will likely remain in cages post-2025.

Read more about the cage-free commitment.

WHY ISN'T CAGE-FREE CRUELTY-FREE?

Despite the impression you might get from the countless adverts showing you cage-free hens living ‘happy’ lives in open fields, the reality is tragically different for the tens of millions of cage-free hens farmed in the UK.

Whether imprisoned in cages or crowded barns with access to outside, cage-free hens are not living the ‘happy’, ‘free’ or ‘natural’ lives you see in the shiny marketing images on egg cartons or TV adverts. Half of all individuals born into the egg industry have a tragic beginning. All male chicks will be killed within 24 hours of birth, primarily by gassing, although maceration (being thrown into a giant blender) is still permissible in certain circumstances. This happens regardless of whether chicks born in the hatcheries are destined for caged, barn, free-range or organic farms.

Ignoring what the high-welfare marketing tells you, even hens kept in free-range farms will still spend most of their lives in crowded sheds surrounded by thousands of other hens. The ‘stocking density’ for free-range is nine hens per square metre. Shockingly, this is the equivalent of 14 adults sharing a one-room flat! They will still spend most of their time standing on metal wire or a floor covered in faeces.

Although free-range hens technically must have access to the outside, this doesn’t necessarily mean they will spend much or even any time outside. ‘Popholes’ — the doors in the sides of sheds that give hens access to the outside — can be shared by up to 600 hens. Hens are fiercely territorial, and the more dominant hens will often guard the popholes and stop less dominant hens from leaving. High-stress environments like these exacerbate this. It can mean that some hens will never go outside.

Broken and diseased

Our investigations have exposed dying, death and decay in all laying hen farms — from cages to free-range. In our most recent free-range investigation, we exposed many dead and dying birds in ‘high-welfare’ farms such as those supplying Waitrose and M&S.

In cage-free ‘systems’, feather pecking, where hens peck at each others’ feathers through boredom and stress, is common. To attempt to curb this, most cage-free hens (except organic) will be ‘debeaked’ when they are chicks. This involves a painful procedure which removes up to a third of their beak with an infrared laser. It can mean that they are less able to preen themselves and remove red mites from their skin, which are very common in egg farms.

Many hens suffer from injuries such as keel bone (sternum) fractures, which cause them pain and can severely limit their movement. This is induced by the keel bone not forming correctly due to the large amount of calcium a hen takes to produce so many eggs. Some studies have shown injuries to be more common in cage-free systems than cages. Feather loss is also abundantly common in cage-free farms — many hens we documented suffered extreme feather loss, meaning that their wing bones were exposed and had red and raw patches on their undersides.

When you think about egg-laying hens living happy lives in free-range paddocks like ‘high-welfare’ advertising would have you believe, you may not have considered what happens to them when their egg production slows down. Animal agriculture prioritises profit over the well-being of animals, and egg farms are no different. Even though free-living hens can live until they’re 12 years old, hens who are farmed, whether they’re kept in cages or on free-range farms, will be slaughtered when they are just 18 months old. This is because their egg production drops slightly, and they’re no longer as profitable to the industry.

To transport hens to the slaughterhouse, many free-range farms with large numbers of hens, will use catching teams to catch, transport and slaughter hens at the end-of-lay, in a process known as ‘depopulation’. In a UK-first, in 2023, Animal Justice Project exposed chicken-catching company AD Harvey in an investigation that was featured in every major UK newspaper. It exposed violent abuse of hens, including workers stamping on, throwing and slamming hens into crates at two free-range farms and two caged hen farms.

This is the reality of the cruelty that you pay for even when you are told that you are buying ‘high-welfare’ ‘ethical’ eggs.

EGG-FREE, NOT CAGE-FREE

No matter how convincing the adverts are of free-range hens wandering around in open fields in the sunshine, we know cage-free is just another ‘high-welfare’ smokescreen. There is nothing ‘free’ about the cage-free environments that hens will be moved to from 2025. They will still be imprisoned in crowded sheds, exploited for their eggs and killed at a fraction of their lifespan. 

No exploitation of animals for profit will ever respect their rights or allow them to live a natural life.

The only way to protect hens is to stop eating eggs and go vegan.