All major UK supermarkets and food companies have committed to going cage-free with their whole eggs and egg products by 2025. Although this is just a voluntary commitment and not legislation, it is expected that millions of egg-laying hens that are currently kept in colony cage farms, will be moved to cage-free farms — most likely barn systems.

Whilst welfare groups have welcomed the move away from cages as a positive step for hens, we know that barns and free-range farms still subject hens to a life of suffering and a violent death at a fraction of their natural life span.

So why isn’t cage-free farming all it’s ‘cracked up’ to be?

A DOZEN REASONS WHY CAGE-FREE ISN'T CRUELTY-FREE

1. Male chicks are killed at birth

No matter if they are farmed in cages, barns or in free-range farms, all male chicks in the egg industry will be killed within 24 hours of birth. This is because they can’t lay eggs and therefore are useless to the industry. The standard method in the UK is gassing, although maceration, (essentially throwing chicks in a high speed blender), is still legal and is permitted in certain circumstances.

2. Hens are still slaughtered at a small fraction of their lifespan

Whilst free-living hens may live until they are up to 12 years old, hens farmed in cage-free systems will be slaughtered when they are around 18 months old. This is because they’re egg production has dropped and they’re no longer considered as profitable.

3. Many still experience violent depopulation at the end of their lives

As if they haven’t suffered enough, many hens in cage-free and caged systems will experience one final assault at the end of their lives in the form of ‘depopulation’. This violent process, which Animal Justice Project exposed in 2023, involves the catching, roughly carrying and slamming of hens into crates. Injuries and death are common in this horrific process.

4. Most still endure painful mutilations like debeaking

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

5. They still spend the majority of their lives in crowded sheds

Despite the marketing images you might see of ‘free-range’ hens clucking around happily in fields, even the hens marketed as the ‘highest welfare’; of free-range will still spend the majority of their lives in stuffy, dirty crowded sheds, standing on hard flooring, with very little natural light. They will be crammed in at nine hens per square metre, which is the equivalent of 14 adults sharing a one room flat!

6. Even ‘free-range’ hens may spend little to no time outside

Even for those free-range hens that are afforded the ‘luxury’ of access to the outside, many of them will spend very little (if any) time outside. The ‘popholes’ — small doors in the side of the sheds which give them access to the outside — can be shared with up to 600 other hens. Hens can be aggressively territorial and the more dominant hens will guard these popholes, meaning that many will never go outside.

7. Many hens will still be left sick and dying in farms

Our investigations have exposed dying, death and decay in all types of laying hen farms — from cages to free-range.

8. Injuries are common in cage-free ‘systems’

Many hens suffer from injuries such as keel bone (sternum) fractures which cause them pain and can severely limit their movement. This is caused by the keel bone not forming properly, due to the large amount of calcium taken for a hen to produce so many eggs. Some studies have shown injuries to be even more common in cage-free systems than in cages.

Feather loss is also abundantly common in cage-free farms, with many hens we documented suffering from extreme feather loss, meaning that their wing bones were exposed and they had red and raw patches on their undersides.

9. Diseases and infections are common too

The staggering numbers of hens kept in one space mean that diseases spread quickly. Infectious Bronchitis (IB) can lead to the deaths of a quarter of the birds in a shed.

Since 2021, more than eight million farmed chickens, have been killed or ‘culled’, due to Avian Influenza. This also led to the mass ‘housing order’ of all farmed and domesticated chickens in the UK who, regardless of whether they were ‘free-range’, ‘organic’; or ‘backyard’ chickens, were kept inside for six months to prevent infection. It is still legal to keep free-range hens inside for up to 16 weeks if there has been a bird flu outbreak in the local area and to continue to label the eggs as free-range.

10. Overproduction of eggs can cause hens health issues

Today’s farmed hens have been selectively bred to lay an average of 300 eggs a year – 30 times more than their ancestors would. This puts immense pressure on their bodies, leading to injuries and disease such as keel bone fractures and egg peritonitis which is a major cause of death in egg-laying hens.

11. They are unable to carry out their natural behaviours

Many of the reasons given for ‘improving welfare’ in all types of animal farming, is that it allows animals to carry out more of their ‘natural behaviours’. In egg-laying farms this means that hens are given access to ‘enrichments’ such as dust baths, nesting boxes and perches. In reality these don’t offer any form of meaningful enrichment for hens, who are often still competing with hundreds of other hens to use them. Being surrounded by thousands of other hens in a stinking, crowded shed is NOT a natural environment for hens and inevitably leads to stress and often, aggression.

12. Hens are still being exploited for their ‘products’

Whether you buy your eggs from a budget supermarket, or from the family-run organic farm in your village, the bottom line is that those hens are being exploited for the ‘products’ that they produce. In a system that is motivated by profit, animals’ wellbeing will always suffer.

Our Cage-free isn't Cruelty-free campaign exposes the truth about cage-free farms ahead of the cage-free commitment in 2025.

Read more about the reality of cage-free on our campaign homepage.