Imagine living your entire life in a crowded lift and you’ll get a sense of the awful lives these animals lead.
Supermarket Iceland has today been dubbed the UK’s worst supermarket for caging hens as a new report shows it faces failure in its commitment to go cage-free before the end of the year.
Animal protection charity The Humane League UK (THL UK) published a ranking of UK supermarkets today, based on their cage-free progress. All have committed to source only cage-free eggs by the end of 2025.
The charity also rated Asda as a supermarket of concern due to gaps in its reporting on transitioning to cage-free systems. Lidl, Tesco, Morrisons, and Aldi are on track to meet their commitment, while still selling eggs from cages today. Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, M&S and the Co-op are already cage-free.
Lack
Claire Williams, campaigns manager at The Humane League UK, said: “Iceland have had a decade to get the hens in its supply chain out of cruel cages, and yet sourced more eggs from caged birds last year than in any of the years before it.
"Imagine living your entire life in a crowded lift and you’ll get a sense of the awful lives these animals lead. We really aren’t interested in excuses as long as Iceland is supporting blatant animal cruelty.
"They need to move quickly and act to make the 2025 deadline. The British public and hundreds of thousands of hens deserve far better.”
According to Iceland’s own data, they have been going backwards on their progress towards becoming cage-free. In 2023-2024, 71 per cent of the eggs Iceland sold came from caged hens, six per cent more than the previous year, and the highest amount since Iceland began reporting in 2017-2018.
Additionally, Iceland has only committed to sourcing its whole eggs from cage-free hens, not ingredient eggs - which falls short of other supermarkets. Their lack of progress could impact hundreds of thousands of hens.
Public
Iceland made the original promise in 2016, stating that “it is clear that our customers would prefer to buy eggs from non-caged hens”.
While barren battery cages were outlawed in the UK in 2012, an estimated eight million hens are still trapped in so-called ‘enriched’ cages, which still severely harm the wellbeing of hens.
In these cages, hens cannot properly perform key instinctual behaviours such as dust-bathing, perching, roosting, and wing-flapping. This creates intense stress for the birds, as well as leading to weaker bones.
Recent research shows that 94 per cent of the UK public oppose the use of cages for laying hens.
Iceland has been approached for comment. An Asda spokesperson told The Ecologist: “We have been working closely with our suppliers on improving the welfare of their laying hens and we are working to move all our own label shell eggs and ingredient eggs to cage-free during 2025.”
This Author
Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from The Humane League UK.
