EAST LANSING, Mich. – This week’s vote on Issue 2 in Ohio to establish a Livestock Care Standards Board is the latest response to increasing interest in how our food is produced. Egg production, and more specifically the animal welfare aspects of laying hen housing, is a good example of how the public discussion can become one-dimensional and fail to consider the trade-offs inherent in selecting any single system. 

Limiting the public debate about egg production to a discussion that is only about animal welfare ignores other important attributes of a sustainable system, including food safety, food affordability, environmental impact and worker safety. While providing appropriate animal health and well-being is a basic requirement of any hen housing system, to responsibly evaluate hen housing and develop a truly sustainable egg supply a more holistic approach is needed. 

In addition, groups developing standards for animal agriculture operations and those purchasing eggs need objective guidance on the full range of hen housing options available. Contrary to what you might read on the Internet, it is not a black and white, or in this case a caged or cage-free, decision. A spectrum of housing options exists, from the conventional cage systems used by the vast majority of farms producing eggs today, to “enriched” housing, to cage-free. To oversimplify this issue arbitrarily limits discussion of the options available to produce safe, affordable eggs sustainably.

For example, a newer hen housing system called “enriched housing” is now being used in Europe and deserves consideration in the United States. These evolving housing systems provide an enhanced environment that allows more space per bird, the opportunity for hens to express natural behaviors while keeping eggs separate from feces, and protection from environmental extremes and more aggressive hens. 

To provide adequate data to fully evaluate enriched housing’s potential benefits in the United States and to investigate the overall sustainability of hen housing systems, a commercial-scale study of housing alternatives is being organized by the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply, a coalition of leading animal welfare scientists, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, egg suppliers, food manufacturers, restaurant/foodservice and food retail companies.  Michigan State University and the University of California, Davis, along with advisors the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Humane Association and the Environmental Defense Fund, will investigate multiple impacts of cage-free aviary, enriched housing and the caged housing environments currently used by the contemporary U.S. egg industry. 

The research, when complete, will help standard-setting groups like the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board and other organizations make independent, evidence-based decisions that are ethically grounded, scientifically verified, economically viable and ultimately in alignment with the interests of consumers and laying hens.

An emotional rush to judgment on which housing system is best could inadvertently have a detrimental impact on animal health and well-being and other aspects of sustainability. Regardless of who’s setting the standards, a holistic, evidence-based approach supported by thoughtful, thorough scientific research is the right answer.

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