{"id":76914,"date":"2016-08-01T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=76914"},"modified":"2016-07-28T16:22:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T15:22:58","slug":"the-movement-to-free-hens-from-cages-may-be-going-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/the-movement-to-free-hens-from-cages-may-be-going-global\/","title":{"rendered":"The Movement to Free Hens from Cages May Be Going Global"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/a>

(Marcio Jose Sanchez\/AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

25 Jul 2016 – <\/em>Dozens of American restaurant chains, supermarket chains and dining\u00a0service companies have committed<\/a> in the last two years\u00a0to ending their use or sales of eggs laid by caged hens. On Monday [25 Jul], one of the world\u2019s largest food service suppliers, Paris-based Sodexo, upped the ante,\u00a0saying it would switch to cage-free eggs in all its global operations by 2025.<\/p>\n

The announcement by a major international\u00a0company is a sign that the rapid shift in the United States to cage-free eggs, led by consumers but long championed by animal rights activists, is\u00a0going more global. It came after talks with animal rights groups, as well as\u00a0an international animal rights coalition recently formed by The Humane League, a small American farm animal rights organization\u00a0that has driven\u00a0several U.S. companies\u2019 pledges to swear off eggs from caged hens.<\/p>\n

[McDonald\u2019s is changing the eggs we eat<\/a>] <\/em><\/p>\n

Sodexo had already pledged\u00a0last year to use only cage-free eggs and egg products in its U.S. operations by 2020. The new decision will affect both liquid eggs and the 250 million shell eggs the company purchases annually\u00a0for use at\u00a032,000<\/a> schools, hospitals, corporations and other sites it services in 80 countries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how many of those eggs already come from uncaged hens. Battery cages \u2014 small wire enclosures whose floors are smaller than a piece of letter-sized paper \u2014 are banned in the European Union, and\u00a0Sodexo, which says it generates about 40 percent of its revenues in Europe, said in a statement that it already uses only cage-free eggs in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. But about\u00a0half of egg-laying hens in the E.U. are housed in larger \u201cenriched cages,\u201d and\u00a0David Coman-Hidy, The Humane League\u2019s executive director, said Sodexo had agreed to stop purchasing eggs from farms using those systems.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

Eggs laid by cage-free chickens at a farm near Waukon, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall\/AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

In a statement<\/a>, Sodexo\u2019s senior vice president of supply management, Michel Franceschi, said the company plans to \u201csupport and contribute to the progressive transformation of the whole industry.\u201d He said it would\u00a0would \u201ctake advice\u201d from the Humane Society, Compassion in World Farming and The Humane League \u201cto accompany the conversion and the evolution of the local industry so that by 2025, we will be able to source cage-free eggs from local producers in each country where we operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Egg producers pledge to stop grinding newborn male chickens to death<\/a>] <\/em><\/p>\n

In February 2015, Sodexo became one of the first large\u00a0companies to commit to a totally cage-free egg future<\/a>\u00a0in the United States, expanding a previous policy of using\u00a0only cage-free shelled eggs to include liquid eggs as well by 2020. That came after what Coman-Hidy described as a \u201ccontentious\u201d campaign against the company by his and other animal rights groups, and it was followed by a string of other similar corporate pledges. Aaron Ross, The Humane League\u2019s campaigns director,\u00a0said this time, Sodexo\u00a0seemed \u201cexcited to be a leader\u201d on the issue globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is that just like we went industry by industry in the U.S., we can take the same approach and just shift the global practice away from cages,\u201d Coman-Hidy said in an interview, referring to the\u00a0Open Wing Alliance<\/a>, a coalition he said his organization has formed with 12 animal rights groups from countries including France,\u00a0Australia and South Korea, to\u00a0focus on taking the cage-free momentum international.<\/p>\n

In the United States, increasing consumer concern<\/a> about how animals are raised for food has driven demand for\u00a0meat and poultry that is free-range, antibiotics-free, grass-fed and otherwise perceived as healthier or more humane. Last month, Perdue, the country\u2019s third-largest chicken producer, announced that it would change<\/a> the way it raises and slaughters chickens, including by giving them more exposure to natural light, in response to customers\u2019 animal welfare concerns.<\/p>\n

[This could be the start to a whole new world of chicken<\/a>] <\/em><\/p>\n

Whether\u00a0the issue of hen housing conditions will\u00a0have the same traction at a global level remains to be seen. Coman-Hidy, whose group\u00a0also negotiated a commitment from\u00a0Grupo Bimbo in Mexico, said he thinks \u201cthe issue\u00a0of caging animals in cages that are just barely larger than their bodies is universally reviled by people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cage-free eggs, however, do not come from hens\u00a0pecking and clucking in verdant pastures. They are able to roam freely in large, crowded barns, stretch their wings and do things like dustbathe. But their beaks are often still partially cut off to\u00a0<\/a>prevent them from pecking one another, and they do not go outside.<\/p>\n

And as the corporate timelines suggest, the switch won\u2019t affect hens for many generations to come. Egg producers say the process of converting caged systems is logistically mammoth<\/a> and unlikely to happen by 2025, corporate commitments notwithstanding. Currently, less than 10 percent of eggs sold in the United States\u00a0are laid by\u00a0cage-free or free-range hens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u00a0should be no illusion\u00a0that these animals\u00a0live great lives. They\u2019re still on factory farms,\u201d Coman-Hidy said. \u201cBut this is such a meaningful improvement that we feel strongly it\u2019s worth fighting for.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

This story has been updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday [25 Jul], one of the world\u2019s largest food service suppliers, Paris-based Sodexo, upped the ante, saying it would switch to cage-free eggs in all its global operations by 2025. The announcement by a major international company is a sign that the rapid shift to cage-free eggs, led by consumers but long championed by animal rights activists, is going more global.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}