Call for 2012 promotional blitz
Source Ranger www.bfrepa.co.uk
An EU-wide public information campaign should be launched to encourage consumers to switch to buying free range and organic eggs when the ban on conventional cages comes into force in 2012.
And the European Commission should bring together supermarkets, consumer bodies, food manufacturers and the food service sector to persuade them to support alternative systems.
These 'boost the ban' ideas come from the welfare group Compassion in World Farming in a new report aimed at ensuring that the planned prohibition actually does go ahead.
CIWF says the "historic victory for animal welfare" is now under threat because of moves by the intensive egg sector to have the ban delayed. A decision to retain the conventional cage would condemn millions more hens to a life of "confinement, deprivation and suffering," says the welfare group
The report, called The way forward for Europe's egg industry: keeping the ban on battery cages in 2012, comes just a month after a 'keep the ban' report from the RSPCA, featured in last month's Ranger. Both organisations want a ban of all types of cage.
CIWF says that the growing interest by companies in corporate social responsibility (CSR)—which underlines environmental and social performance as well as financial results—could also be deployed to support the switch to non-cage egg purchasing particularly with regard to the import of processed egg.
Supermarkets and food industry companies "should be encouraged to fulfil their corporate social responsibility in this field by committing themselves to only sourcing eggs and egg products produced to EU welfare standards," says the CIWF. "To do otherwise would be to undermine a welfare reform enacted by EU legislators and wanted by a majority of EU citizens."
Key food manufacturers and food service operators have already adopted CSR policies, says the organisation, but these primarily focus on social and environmental issues. They should now be encouraged to follow the example of those companies that have extended their CSR policies to include animal welfare.
CIWF also calls for all public sector bodies which provide meals—such as prisons, schools and the armed services—to be encouraged to only source eggs and egg products produced to EU welfare standards.
And it wants the EU to reconsider its decisions on the labelling of imported egg and egg products. While eggs produced inside the EU have to be labelled with the means of production imported eggs do not. This is because officials believe that insisting on such a move would not be compatible with World Trade Agreement rules on technical barriers to trade.
CIWF believes there is a sound legal case for insisting on imports carrying the same labels as home produced product.
It concludes that the extra costs of a switch to non-intensive production should be met by a combination of government support to producers and consumers paying "a little more" and that the non-market benefits, in terms of the value placed by consumers on hen welfare, far outweigh the costs of a ban.
