Bidfood to ditch cage eggs
New Zealand’s leading food service company will stop selling eggs from caged hens by 2024.
Bidfood NZ is a major provider to the food service industry with 15,000 customers nationwide.
The company is the largest supplier of eggs to the hospitality sector and second only to supermarkets in the number of eggs it sells.
Under its new cage-free policy, Bidfood will phase out sales of eggs from caged hens over the next five years. By 2024, all whole eggs sold will be cage-free.
Animal rights group Safe called the company’s cage-free commitment ‘‘a massive victory for hens’’.
Safe head of campaigns Marianne Macdonald said it epitomised how rapidly New Zealand’s egg industry was changing.
‘‘Bidfood’s announcement adds yet another voice to a growing chorus of companies saying no to cage cruelty; I’d go as far as to say it’s eggscellent,’’ Macdonald said. ‘‘With all major purchasers of eggs turning their back on cage cruelty, the egg farming industry needs to face the fact that cage eggs will soon be a thing of the past.’’
Bidfood joins a growing list of companies making the switch to cage-free eggs, including all of the country’s major supermarkets.
Countdown led the charge with a pledge to sell only free-range and barn eggs under its own brand by 2022. It has since extended its commitment to stop the sale of all cage eggs by 2025.
FreshChoice and SuperValue, which are franchised by Countdown’s parent company, Woolworths, will also stock only cage-free eggs by 2025.
Supermarket rival Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak ‘n Save, has pledged to be cage-free by 2027. Fast food chains McDonald’s and Burger King are also on the free-range bandwagon, with both making the switch in 2016.
Currently 69 per cent of supermarket egg sales are from caged hens, but over the past year the variety has shown a 1.8 per cent decline. They have lost ground to barn, free range and organic eggs, which have all grown (11.5, 7.2 and 14.4 per cent respectively).