Mahi Klosterhalfen, a German campaigner against battery cages, writes:
Germany is taking tremendous leaps towards becoming a cage-free country. A broad coalition of animal protection groups is convincing retailers to stop offering battery eggs. Today, four major retailers announced they will be cage-free as of 2009. With today’s announcement, German food markets that carry battery eggs have fallen into the minority, measured by both combined revenue and by number of stores.
This news is especially important because, starting in 2009, barren battery cages will be outlawed in Germany. There is, however, a replacement system called “colony cages” that, while better than battery cages, offers only minimal welfare improvements. With soaring prices for cage-free eggs and a future demand for billions of eggs per year from cage-free systems, chances are good that hardly any producer will risk investing in these modified cages.
Elsewhere in Europe, Austria and Switzerland have already gone cage-free. If an economically powerful country such as Germany soon follows suit, this would send a clear message to the worldwide egg industry about the future of battery cages.
Germany’s largest factory farming group is clearly feeling threatened by these developments. A couple days ago, they issued a press release condemning the efforts of animal protection groups who were trying to “force” retailers to go cage-free by using “irrelevant” arguments.
