The global cage-free egg transition is gaining pace but progress remains uneven, Compassion in World Farming’s latest EggTrack report has warned.
The animal rights charity’s analysis of 852 commitments, from across 602 business entities, found the average cage-free transition stood at 85%, improving on the 75% recorded in its 2023 report.
Compassion revealed that nearly a third of all businesses were now fully cage-free across their supply chains, with 71 achieving the milestone since the 2023 EggTrack. This means more than 160 million hens are benefiting from being cage-free each year, Compassion said.
However, the animal welfare charity said some businesses were falling short of their targets, pointing to the 48% of 415 commitments not meeting their 2025 deadlines. The charity also warned some companies were weakening their commitments, with more than 60 having deadlines pushed back and nearly 30 businesses removing commitment deadlines.
At the same time, 50 businesses have withdrawn their cage-free pledges entirely.
Compassion global director of food business Dr Tracey Jones said the report was a “defining moment for corporate cage-free commitments” adding that companies falling behind “must act now”.
“Those that have dropped commitments must reinstate them immediately,” she said. “With legislative momentum building and the rising global trend towards cage-free, companies have a clear opportunity and responsibility to turn promises into action and consign cages to the history books for good.”
Compassion said European companies continued to lead the cage-free transition in 2025, with 377 commitments posting an average progress of 94.2% – up from 80% in 2023. It said this was “supported by a mature market and an evolving legislative landscape, with proposals to ban cages for laying hens in Europe expected by the end of 2026”.
But, with an average cage-free transition of 96.9% across 71 reporting commitments, the UK topped the wider European figure.
Some 31 of the 49 UK companies have completed their cage-free transition across all egg categories including Aldi UK, Lidl GB and Tesco UK which achieved the milestone in the past 12 months, joining the likes of M&S, Co-op and Sainsbury’s.
The report noted Asda had met its commitment across own-brand eggs (although it urged the supermarket to extend this across branded shell eggs, too) and recognised the progress shown by Morrisons in going 100% cage-free for shell eggs and 92% for egg products.
However, Compassion warned “progress is not universal”, highlighting Iceland’s delayed commitment to 2027, and it said Spar UK had removed its public commitment altogether.
Spar UK told The Grocer: “All Spar brand shell eggs are cage-free across the United Kingdom, along with all ingredients in nationally available products.”
The two UK producers included in the report, Noble Foods and Fairburn’s Eggs, extended their deadlines to 2026 but were close to meeting their targets, reaching 95% and 89% cage-free production respectively.
The British government has published plans to phase out cages for laying hens by 2032 but still permits imports from countries, most notably Ukraine, with widespread cage use.
CIWF UK head Anthony Field said the government needed to do more to support the transition to cage-free.
“The UK government should back up welfare moves like this by adopting ‘core standards’ for animal welfare in trade – a view shared by all the UK’s major animal welfare groups and industry bodies like the NFU,” he said.
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