The Great Uncaging of the American Laying Hen

When McDonald’s announced last year that it would transition to cage-free eggs, McMuffins were the first thing that came to mind. The breakfast item, a drive-through icon, is one of the chain’s most popular dishes and part of the reason why McDonald’s buys some 2 billion eggs annually. Come 2025, each of the little eggy circles tucked inside an English muffin will come from a cage-free hen.

Much like fast-food chains and food retailers limiting the use of antibiotics in their supply chains, cage-free-egg announcements along the lines of McDonald’s have become a near weekly occurrence. Subway, Starbucks, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell have all said they will make the shift, as have major food makers such as Nestlé and the retail giant Walmart. The cage-free-egg announcement has become such a trend that as more companies pledge to make the change, I find myself wondering what, if anything, they sell that is made with eggs.

The convenience store 7-Eleven is the latest to make such an announcement, as it did on Tuesday, saying that customers had said it was important for the company to “serve more humanely sourced eggs.” Like McDonald’s, it expects to complete the shift by 2025. Other time lines are expected to be faster—Taco Bell will make the change by the end of 2016—but at this point, the announcements are little more than promises. The egg industry has yet to really change.

“Nearly all the laying hens are still in cages,” said Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States. According to the Department of Agriculture, 23.6 million hens were in cage-free facilities as of last September—out of 275 million birds overall. That’s about 9 percent of all the laying hens kept in the country and includes certified organic flocks, which cannot use cages, and conventional cage-free facilities. But with companies like McDonald’s and Nestlé—the world’s largest food company—moving to cage-free eggs, the numbers are set to rise.

“Cage free is just the next logical step in providing eggs to our markets and comfort for our hens,” Glenn Hickman, CEO of Hickman’s Family Farms, told the trade publication WattAgNet. “Our customers are moving to cage-free faster than the regulatory environment is requiring it, so we want to ensure abundant supplies. It’s the future of our industry and our business.” Following McDonald’s announcement that it would transition to cage-free eggs, Hickman’s Family Farms expanded its Arizona facilities to house 2 million cage-free hens.

“Right now, cage-free is a very small portion of the market,” Shapiro said, “but within a few years, cage-free will be the norm.”

WattAgNet estimates that if all the cage-free facilities being installed in 2016 are fully stocked by the end of the year, there will be another 19 million cage-free hens in the country.

It won’t be the first time that a fringe approach to raising livestock focused on animal welfare has become the status quo. As Shapiro noted, nearly all veal calves were kept in crates a decade ago. Now only about 30 percent are. Egg-laying hens underwent a similar change about 15 years ago that was also driven by the fast-food industry, when chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King asked producers to give birds more space. The average amount of space an egg-laying hen lived in had been 48 square inches, and the fast-food chains asked for it to be increased to 72 square inches. “The whole industry went to that new standard,” said Shapiro. “Everybody.”

Regulation is driving some of the change as well. In 2008, California passed Proposition 2, which requires that eggs sold in the state be produced in roomier cages, and Massachusetts will vote on a similar ballot measure in November. Unlike change driven in the dairy aisle, however, ballot-box regulatory shifts to egg production have the potential to lead to years-long court battles, if the fight Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and egg producers put up against the California law is anything to judge by. (In short, King argued that California voters couldn’t establish regulations for farmers in other states like Iowa, the country’s leading egg producer. The courts begged to differ.)

Between 2008 and today, the industry has become increasingly aware that consumer demands have changed and that welfare and ethics are as important as quality and price.

Still, cage-free hen houses aren’t the green, grassy ideal that some consumers may imagine. Hens are still kept indoors, and while they have more space than in caged facilities, the barns are still crowded. But Shapiro sees the shift that is under way as progress.

“Cage-free, while not cruelty free, is a substantial improvement over confinement,” he said. “The birds are much better off,” and research has shown that cage-free facilities present fewer food-safety risks.

Shapiro allowed that other systems, such as free-range or pasture-based operations, are better for hens than cage-free. “Cage-free will become the norm in the industry, and I think there are many in the industry that want to consistently strive for improvement,” and those ranches, pushed by consumers and groups like the HSUS, may continue to shift the welfare standards of the egg industry once the cage-free revolution has come to pass.