caged hen

Farmfoods is due to face protests from animal welfare campaigners at its stores this week over its refusal to commit to phasing out the sale of eggs from caged hens.

Animal welfare group The Humane League said it planned to picket the retailer’s branches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen on 5 and 6 November as part of a nationwide campaign urging it to end the egg sourcing practice.

“As the only major supermarket that hasn’t produced a public timeline to source exclusively cage-free eggs, it’s time for Farmfoods to join the other mainstream grocers that have taken action on this issue,” said The Humane League’s UK campaigns co-ordinator, Pru Elliott.

Farmfoods did not respond to The Grocer’s request for comment.

It comes as Lidl this week followed up its pledge to end the sale of eggs from caged hens in the UK by 2025 by extending the commitment globally and incorporating products containing egg ingredients.

It will now phase out the sale of caged hen eggs from its own-label shell egg range and any products with cage egg ingredients, such as baked goods, across its entire global estate - representing more than 10,000 stores in 27 countries.

The commitment was one of the first major corporate cage-free policies to affect many Eastern European countries, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, said The Humane League, which described Lidl’s move as a “strong indicator caged confinement will soon be a relic of the past”.