In an ideal world, everyone and every business would simply turn their backs on any form of animal exploitation. Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to happen any time soon. In the meantime, SAFE is working hard to help hens and their chicks across all types of farming systems and getting rid of cages is a vital step in the journey towards a future where all animals are valued as individuals, not commodities.

Cage-free commitments are a fundamental component of SAFE’s ongoing cage-free campaign. Each corporate cage-free commitment gives the egg industry another reason to move away from the cruel caging of hens. While they are not perfect, cage-free commitments are a huge improvement from a company’s previous policy, which is to continue using or selling cruel cage eggs indefinitely.

You can learn more about cage-free commitments and the importance of corporate campaigning here.

A company will either make a commitment to use only cage-free whole-shell eggs or make a 100% cage-free commitment that includes both whole-shell eggs and liquid ingredient eggs. SAFE encourages companies with cage-free commitments for just whole-shell eggs to update their commitments to include a future date where all liquid ingredient eggs used will also be cage-free.

Imagine you have two cafés next door to each other. The first, let’s call it Café Blue, has a cage-free commitment for whole-shell eggs and the second, Café Green, has a cage-free commitment for both whole-shell and liquid ingredient eggs.

Café Blue will only use whole-shell eggs from cage-free hens, meaning any fresh eggs on the menu will be cage-free. This cage-free commitment won’t extend to prepared cabinet food items containing egg ingredients, such as cakes and pastries.

Café Green will use cage-free whole-shell eggs as well as cage-free ingredient eggs. This means that any fresh eggs on the menu will be cage-free, and any egg ingredients found within its cabinet food items will also be from cage-free hens.

It’s common for businesses to commit to going cage-free at a future date. This allows the business some time to work with its supplier and phase out its use of cage eggs over the selected time period.

As much as we would like to see businesses switch to cage-free overnight, change can take time and SAFE encourages businesses to set achievable cage-free goals.