No doubt about it, animal-welfare activists have made the fate of chickens a mainstream concern, says the Washington Post. “In the past two years, nearly 200 U.S. companies — including every major grocery and fast-food chain — that together buy half of the 7 billion eggs laid monthly have pledged to use only cage-free eggs by 2025,” the Post notes. By pushing the biggest names in agriculture and food to go cage-free, advocates have inspired the public to care not just about the treatment of animals in general, but farm animals in particular.
Earlier generations of activists weren’t inclined to befriend industry, and some, like The Earth Liberation Front, went so far as to destroy slaughterhouses and fur farms. But today’s chicken-farm reformers have used the power of the internet, ballot measures, and campaigns against specific companies to pressure industry heads to the negotiating table. Many of the movement’s leaders are young, like David Coman-Hidy, the 27-year-old who started The Humane League which was based on his college thesis. He and his colleagues sat down with the food-service giant, Sodexo, in Paris this spring to discuss switching all of the company’s 32,000 global accounts to cage-free eggs. The company said in July that it would do so.
Industry experts have warned that cage-free eggs will cost customers three times as much as conventional eggs, and one 2015 food industry-backed study suggests the hens will be more likely to peck each other to death if they aren’t caged.
“We know [cage-free] is not better for hens,” said Chad Gregory, president of United Egg Producers, which represents the majority of American egg farmers. Many activists, he adds, don’t even consume animal products. They “want to take away consumer choices,” he says. “Ultimately, they’re not going to eat our product anyway.”
For their part, farmers have complained that converting their systems will be hugely expensive and complicated, and that it may not be possible by 2025. But animal-welfare advocates tell naysayers to look at Europe, where cage-free systems have been used widely for some time without serious problems. As to the cost increase at the grocery store, reformers insist that prices will fall once supply scales up.