Battery egg ban is welcome but does not go far enough
Animal welfare campaigners have greeted the decision by one of France’s largest wholesalers to stop selling eggs from caged birds by 2025 – but say there is still work to do.
Telsha Arora from animal rights group Compassion in World Farming said the move by Metro France was good news but more progress was needed.
Animal rights charity L214 says Aldi, Colruyt, Carrefour, Lidl, Monoprix, Schiever and Système U have pledged to stop selling eggs from caged birds while catering giants Compass, Sodexo and Elior have vowed to stop by 2025.
L214 said this date gave time for the industry to convert.
Ms Arora said more companies should follow Compass and Italian firm Camst, whose shell eggs and egg products will be cage-free by 2025. This would include eggs used in mayonnaise/cakes etc.
Battery cages were banned in 2012 but so-called enriched cages of 30x30x30cm were still legal and Ms Arora said the law only applied to flocks of over 350 laying hens, so batteries were still in legal use.
“The ban also does not apply to pullets, which can be kept in barren cages before they start laying eggs.”
However, she added, the cage ban did not mean living conditions were acceptable as many barn-reared and free-range hens lived in such cramped conditions they were routinely de-beaked to prevent them killing each other.
EU figures show 65% of laying hens are kept in cages, 26% in barns, 14% free range and 4% organic. In the UK, 42% of laying hens are in cages, but the figure in France is around 70%.
MEPs last month also voted to ban cages for rabbits, with 320million bred in cages for meat across the continent.
Meanwhile, L214 has exposed serious abuses on a pig farm in Finistère, Brittany, where rotting corpses were lying on the mesh floor in “deplorable hygiene conditions”. The farm is part of the Triskalia coop.
