From our recent Christmas fundraising campaign, we learned that you care most about hen welfare and our work driving its awareness, and we’ve taken that to heart. In our most recent edition of Chicken & Egg, we outlined our latest campaign, Size Matters, what it’s all about and why we’re encouraging consumers to purchase mixed weight and medium eggs rather than large and extra-large.
Egg size is determined by genetic breeding and feed manipulation but, laying large eggs places enormous pressure on every hen that lays. No farmer wants his hens to have to constantly lay huge eggs. No hen wants to lay consistently huge eggs, it’s not good for her health.
Over 50% of eggs laid by the UK flock of 36 million hens are large.
They are large because supermarkets keep pressing farmers for more whoppers.
They are large because consumers think big is best, big is good value.
So, WHAT do we want to do about it?
We want consumers to improve welfare for every single one of the UK’s 36 million hens by one simple change in their shopping habits – buy mixed weight or medium eggs instead of large. Mixed weight eggs allow hens to lay what comes naturally without farmers being pushed to encourage hens to lay larger eggs; it gives farmers a fairer price, too, for all their eggs rather than just the whoppers.
And HOW are we going to achieve this?
We started our campaign in February by talking to a powerful group of people – the Guild of Food Writers – who are responsible for so many of the recipes we all love to read, follow and enjoy. They have already made a huge contribution to hen welfare by encouraging people to use free-range eggs and now they are happy to help our campaign by encouraging their members to switch to medium and mixed weight eggs. In time we will see this translate into the recipes they write.
We are proud to be collaborating, too, with the egg industry itself on this welfare issue. For years they have wanted consumers to understand that large eggs are not good for the health of their birds, but people don’t always listen or understand, and so change has been slow.
We are promoting our campaign through various media channels including TV, magazines, press (we’ve already had articles in the Daily Mail, The Times and The Guardian) and of course on social media and have plenty more up our sleeve to keep this campaign rolling.
Find out how you can help the campaign by visiting our website for tips and facts. In the meantime, here’s a tip from us on how you can get involved:
EGG ON YOUR FRIENDS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO SIX HENS EVERY TIME THEY BUY HALF A DOZEN!
