Farm says eggs will be cage free
MINNEAPOLIS — As McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, General Mills and other corporate egg buyers increasingly require roomier housing for hens, the egg industry is under pressure to move toward a future that’s freer of cramped bird cages.
Iowa-based Rembrandt Foods, the nation’s third-largest egg producer, last week became the latest to make a long-term commitment to producing cage-free eggs. The company plans to announce a major new cage-free egg farm by year’s end.
“Everything we do in the future will be aligned with cage free,” said Jonathan Spurway, Rembrandt’s marketing vice president.
Animal welfare activists have long and loudly criticized caged housing, where hens are packed so tight they can’t flap their wings. Consumers took notice. Then, so did food companies, which over the past two years have been telling egg suppliers to phase in cage-free production over the next decade or so.
“They have taken a stand that spreads across the entire food system,” said Josh Balk, senior food policy director for the Humane Society of the United States, an advocate for cage-free production.
Still, going even partly cage free will take at least a decade. It will be expensive for producers, and their costs will be at least partly passed down the food chain.
In California, which bans eggs produced in conventional cages, wholesale eggs posted an average weekly price of $2.46 per dozen over the past 52 weeks, compared with $1.86 in the Midwest, according to Urner Barry, a New Jersey-based commodity news service and poultry pricing authority.
Randy Pesciotta, an Urner Barry vice president, said that premium stems largely from California’s cage-free rule, which the state’s voters approved in a referendum and took effect Jan. 1.
About 8 percent of the nation’s egg-laying hens currently reside in cage-free housing. As for the rest, they’re for the most part placed six to a cage, and given 67 square inches of living space, the size of a laptop computer.
In cage-free housing as implemented by the egg industry, hens get at least 144 square inches of living space and are able to engage in natural behavior like perching and nesting. Cage-free hens are still housed indoors, although birds that produce organic eggs must have access to the outdoors.
Rembrandt has cage-free housing for about 15 percent of the nearly 15 million hens it normally houses. The company operates three farms, one in Renville, Minn., and two in Iowa. Almost all of its eggs are “broken” and made into liquid or powdered products, primarily for food manufacturers.
While some of its hen housing could be converted to cage free, Rembrandt plans to build anew as its old capacity is depreciated, Spurway said. A new plant is expected to be announced in the next couple of months that may cost over $100 million.
Rembrandt has not made a final site decision, Spurway said.
The decision will be based partly on such traditional factors as proximity to customers and suppliers. But the risk of bird flu will also be weighed, Spurway said.
Iowa, the nation’s largest egg-producing state, was hammered this spring by bird flu, which led to the deaths of almost 25 million hens — at least 40 percent of the state’s egg-laying capacity. In Minnesota, 5 million commercial turkeys and 4 million egg-laying chickens were killed.
