Cage-free poultry farming is gathering momentum in India. Will McDonald’s crack?

The next time you bite into a McEgg or an egg and cheese McMuffin at your neighbourhood McDonald’s outlet, do so with the knowledge that the egg in it most probably comes from a hen that has been bred in the constricted space of battery cages.

In India, as in many other countries, the fast-food chain sources eggs from battery hens – an inhumane method of breeding poultry, where the hens are kept within the confinements of a space no larger than an A4 sized sheet. In 2015, McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook had put in motion a 10-year-plan to “go cage free”. Following the promise, McDonald’s South Africa and Canada wings switched to cage-free eggs, but in India, where free-range chicken farming is in nascency, it’s yet to take a similar step.

In a letter to McDonald’s India CEO Amit Jatia, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP, Raghav Lakhanpal, recently requested the Indian wing of the fast-food chain to switch to using free-range eggs, citing the company’s plans to improve animal welfare. According to a report by the newswire PTI, the letter was written by the Saharanpur MP on behalf of the organisation People for Animals.

“If a similar policy should be adopted in India, it would change the lives of approximately 120 million egg-laying hens presently suffering in battery cages,” wrote Lakhanpal. “The Animal Welfare Board of India and many state governments have already taken steps to move away from this confinement system, as have many governments and multi-national retailers around the world…. However, the corporations that manufacture eggs in these factory farms continue to rear the birds in intensive confinement.”

The campaign to ban battery cages was launched by People for Animals some years ago, but has gained momentum in the past three months with a Change.org petition. The issue was raised in the Supreme Court in July 2016 (by way of a transfer petition), filed by the Animal Welfare Board of India, calling for a prohibition on the sale of eggs from battery cage farms.

This isn’t the first time that a BJP MP has appealed to the fast food company to switch to free-range eggs. Mumbai-based Poonam Mahajan had written a similar letter to Jatia in December 2016. “Keeping hens in battery cages are likely to harbour salmonella, which is found in retail eggs and is a major cause of food poisoning in India,” she wrote.

The demand for free-range farming by the BJP MPs is a call to ensure more ethical treatment for the birds. Farms like Happy Hens farm in Bengaluru and a smaller operation in Ammapalayam in Tamil Nadu, are attempting to provide birds with a life as cruelty-free as possible.

In February, artist Amitabh Kumar created a street mural in Delhi in association with People for Animals, using the white brick wall of a garbage dump to depict a small cage holding within it a hen, bent over from lack of space. “This is the kind of life that the hen lives in its entire one and a half years and then goes for slaughter,” said Gauri Maulekhi, an animal activist with People for Animals. “It is kept in an intensively confined space and unable to spread its wings ever, while we enjoy our little fried egg. We can make it better with very little effort, a little more compassion, a little more space.”

In a petition, Maulekhi has appealed to McDonald’s India to stop using battery cage eggs.

“We want to make an example out of a company like McDonald’s which sets standards for their eggs, right down to the thickness of the shell required to withstand transportation,” said Maulekhi. “Why can’t they introduce welfare measures for the birds? What McDonald’s is doing goes against sections 3 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, according to which it is the duty of every person in charge of any animal to ensure their well-being and prevent infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering and according to section 11 (1) (E), any animal should be allow reasonable movement within a cage of sufficient height and width.”

People for Animals has three demands, Maulekhi said: a perch for the birds to sit on, a nesting box and at least enough space to spread their wings. “These are not unreasonable demands, all of these can be fulfilled at a nominal cost and without compromising on storage density,” she said. “Only the feed expenditure is likely to go up by 10% to 15%, which will reflect in not more than half a rupee price increase for each egg. Even if there are breakages, the loss will not be exponential.”

While free-range farming is a more humane practice, the association between caged birds and salmonella is an issue that scientists and researchers are divided on.

In a video posted by the Humane Society of The United States, the organisation touches upon the many benefits of eggs procured from free-range chicken – from both an ethical point of view and for the consumer.

On its website, the Humane Society writes: “A prospective case-control study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who recently ate eggs from caged hens had twice the odds of being sickened by Salmonella, and a study in Epidemiology and Infection found nearly 5 times lower odds of Salmonella poisoning in consumers who chose eggs from free-range hens.”

However, according to a report published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there is currently no consensus on the impact of caged, barn and free range egg production on Salmonella contamination.

“There are studies that suggest both, which is why our campaign is not relying on one argument,” said Maulekhi. “The salmonella factor is a peripheral argument, but that said, I have seen the low hygiene levels at large scale hen farms where confined within a small space, they drop faeces on each other and the lack of general cleanliness.”