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...
Pasture-Raised Egg Market Grows
In 2006, Michael Cox, a chicken farmer in northwest Arkansas, faced a choice that many farmers do: Grow or die. His family had been raising chickens for three generations, first for agriculture behemoth Cargill and then for themselves. Even with 800,000 laying hens, Cox was not big enough to compete: “We were planning our funeral,” he said. Cox, who was then 25, switched some of the family’s production to organic, which brought...
