A lot of Canadian hens are headed for a better life. We see a shot of about a dozen eggs in the foreground. Behind them are five or six chickens stuffed in cages.

A lot of Canadian hens are headed for a better life.
Photo Credit: cbc.ca

Animal activists score a victory for caged hens

Sometimes keeping the pressure on actually works.

More and more hens in Canada will be living like this. We see perhaps 200 red and white hens gathered between fences and walking on straw.
More and more hens in Canada will be living like this. © cbc.ca

Take the case of animal activists who have been fighting for years to get the hens who lay the eggs we eat out of their cramped cages.

Last week, Canada’s largest fast-food chain, McDonald’s, announced it will transition to cage-free eggs in its North American restaurants within the next 10 years.

In Canada, that’s a lot of eggs (120 million a year) and a lot of chickens (about 3.2 million laying hens).

And McDonald’s is not alone. Among the companies that have said they will switch to cage-free eggs are Subway and Starbucks, though neither of those chains has laid out a timeline for when they expect the transition to be complete.

Animal activists are celebrating a decision by McDonald's to put an end to hens living like this. We see a closeup of a hen stuffed into a wire-mesh cage.
Animal activists are celebrating a decision by McDonald’s to put an end to confining laying hens to cages like this. © cbc.ca

Food industry expert Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at the University of Guelph, calls McDonald’s decision “audacious” and says it has the potential to significantly change the industry and also to push costs higher.

Most egg-laying hens are confined for life in what are called battery cages, that give hens 67 square inches in which to exist, smaller than one sheet of letter-sized paper.

The European Union banned battery cages more 10 years ago, but no level of Canadian government has yet moved to restrict their use.

Sayara Thurston is campaign manager for Humane Society International/Canada.

She spoke by phone from Montreal about the McDonald’s decision.

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Categories: Economy, Environment & Animal Life, Health, International, Society
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