Since 2007, the Good Egg Award has celebrated companies who are using only cage-free eggs or egg products, or committing to do so by 2012. To date more than 26 million laying hens are set to benefit each year from our award winners’ policies.

It takes more than 6 billion laying hens to produce the eggs required for the global egg market. Eggs are sold either in their shells or are used by restaurants and food manufacturers in a wide range of processed products from soups and sauces to ready meals, cakes, biscuits and desserts.

It is estimated that over 60% of the global egg production comes from hens kept in industrialised systems, mostly using barren battery cages. There are 390 million laying hens kept for egg production in the EU each year, and over two thirds of these are in barren battery cages. In the UK there are around 39 million laying hens and just less than 50% are in barren battery cages. In some EU countries and in the USA nearly all laying hens are caged. Hens start laying regularly at around 18–20 weeks of age and commercially they lay for just over a year before being sent for slaughter; most of their life is therefore spent in confinement.

Use of the barren battery cage in the EU is prohibited with effect from 1 January 2012 (EU Directive 1999/74/EC: laying down minimum standards for the protection of laying hens). Enriched cages however will be legal and many producers in various countries will not have converted their production systems in time, so will still produce eggs from banned cages.