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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2007

Battery cages are going out, too

 

WASHINGTON D.C.--Humane Society of the U.S. factory farming campaign director Paul Shapiro is struggling lately to find new ways of wording announcements that major buyers are, at HSUS request, giving up using eggs from battery-caged hens.

The Burgerville restaurant chain, based in Vancouver, Washington, announced it would make the switch on January 17, 2007. Finagle A Bagel, of Newton, Massa-chusetts, made the switch on January 29. The State University of New York at New Paltz dining halls followed on February 13.

Shapiro had already made similar announcements on behalf of the dining halls at more than 100 other universities, among them Vassar, Princeton, Tufts, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The anti-battery caging drive picked up momentum in September 2006, after the Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. announced that it would begin a four-year transition to using only cage-free eggs.

The change will take that long because Ben & Jerry's is such a big user that an adequate cage-free egg supply is not immediately available. The phase-in gives present suppliers time to revamp their operations to comply with Ben & Jerry's new policy.

Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals director John Youngman noted the success of the HSUS campaign in a February 15 op-ed column for the Vancouver Sun, challenging Canadian egg users to join in.

"AOL and Google have stopped serving battery eggs in their corporate dining facilities," Goodman wrote. "American grocery chains Earth Fare, Whole Foods Market-place, and Wild Oats Natural Marketplace have agreed to stop selling battery eggs. Trader Joe's has converted its brand eggs to cage-free. The Canadian retailers Capers Community Markets and Planet Organic have stopped selling battery eggs.

"The cities of Toronto, Vancouver, Richmond, North Vancouver and New Westminster are considering cage-free egg policies," Goodman said. "The University of Guelph, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the B.C. Institute of Technology are considering similar policies. The writing is on the wall for Canada's egg industry," Goodman declared. "Get cracking and unlock the cages, or consumers will do it for you."