Once Rare, Cage-Free on the Rise
Forreston, Ill. — Inside a long barn next to rolling fields, Rod Wubbena looked out over 12,000 or so brown hens scratching in the wood chips and fluttering onto perches. The chickens have always been cage-free at Phil’s Fresh Eggs, headquartered in the small farming town of Forreston in northwest Illinois, one of the first commercial egg farms in the U.S. to market and produce cage-free eggs. Now that niche is vanishing. “I always...
Panera Pledges Only Cage-Free Eggs in Restaurants by 2020
St. Louis — Within five years, Panera Bread Co. says its U.S. restaurants will stop using eggs from hens confined in cages. Panera, based in suburban St. Louis, said that by 2020, its menu would move to 100 percent cage-free, following other restaurant chains including McDonald’s and Starbucks that have made similar pledges in recent weeks. Currently, about 21 percent of Panera’s eggs are laid by cage-free hens — chickens that are...
Rembrandt Foods Joins Push Toward Cage-Free Eggs
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. Earlier this month, Iowa-based Rembrandt Foods, the nation’s third-largest egg producer, became the latest to make a long-term commitment to producing cage-free eggs. The company plans to announce a major new...
Cage-Free, the Egg of the Future
Will the next egg you crack come from a chicken raised in a roomier barn? Foodies and farmers are in unusual agreement on the answer: If not now, then soon enough. Both say McDonald’s recent decision to transition to “cage free” eggs for its McMuffins and other menu items was a tipping point in the $9 billion egg industry, which still produces 96 percent of its eggs in barns full of stacked wire cages. It will be increasingly hard to...
Humane Society: Costco Egg Farm Mistreating Birds
Seattle — A prominent animal rights group is raising a big stink over alleged cruelty at a massive egg farm owned by a supplier to Costco Wholesale, and prodding the warehouse club to move more rapidly towards its stated goal of offering only cage-free eggs. The Humane Society of the United States said last week it investigated a Hillandale Farms facility in Gettysburg, Penn., where it found hundreds of thousands of tightly packed...
