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The real reason all of your eggs still aren’t cage-free

Blame...your local grocery store?

Nearly half of the eggs sold in the US today come from cage-free farms. That’s an astounding turn, considering that in the early 2000s, just a few percent did.

But according to pledges made by many of the country’s largest food companies — from McDonald’s to IHOP to Starbucks — most of the 94 billion eggs sold each year in America were supposed to be cage-free by now. What happened?

To be sure, there’s been bird flu, spikes in egg prices, and broader shifts in consumer priorities. But most critically, one group of key players in America’s food system largely haven’t made good on their promises to go cage-free: grocery stores.

More than half of US eggs are sold in supermarkets, so if the US egg industry is to get anywhere close to ending the confinement of laying hens in cages, it must have the backing of the nation’s grocery chains. Which is why it’s big news that this week, one of the nation’s largest grocery companies recommitted to its cage-free goal.

The news may seem small — one grocery company changing one of its thousands of products. But it’s a major animal welfare success story in that it will reduce the suffering of millions of chickens. And it demonstrates the power of small but concentrated advocacy work even in the face of massive, multinational companies, giving animal welfare activists even further leverage to get other food giants to keep their own cage-free promises.

Grocery stores are why we don’t have a lot more cage-free eggs

Over the last year, many of the largest US animal welfare groups have directed their activism at a Dutch company you’ve probably never heard of: Ahold Delhaize. But, especially if you live on the East Coast of the US, you’ve probably shopped at one of their more than 2,000 grocery stores. The European company owns Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant, Hannaford, and Martin’s.

A decade ago, the grocery giant — the fourth-largest in the US — had promised that its egg supply would be cage-free by the end of 2025. Hundreds of other food companies had made a similar commitment after pressure from animal activists who urged them to banish cages from their egg supply chains.

It was a David-and-Goliath scenario — nonprofits with budgets in the millions going up against food corporations worth billions.

At the time, the vast majority of America’s 300 million or so egg-laying hens were perpetually confined in cages, which are so small the birds can hardly move around or flap their wings for their entire lives. Animal welfare experts consider cage confinement in egg farming to be a........

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