McDonald's cage-free plan doable, say Ontario egg industry players

Thursday, September 10, 2015

by JIM ALGIE

A 10-year McDonald’s Canada plan to source all eggs for the company’s 1,400-plus restaurants from Canadian cage-free suppliers will require new capital investment for some farmers.

But a spokesperson for the fast food giant’s largest egg supplier figures the plan “is very achievable.”

“This is what they want; this is what the customers want and we’re more than happy to comply and be part of the process with them,” said Margaret Hudson, Burnbrae Farms Ltd. president, in an interview, Thursday.

McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Limited and its U.S. counterpart have both announced they will move to source cage-free eggs. The Canadian company’s commitment to cage-free product begins immediately with a target of five per cent and will gradually increase the target over a 10-year period to 100 per cent.

The move “reinforces the focus we’re placing on our food and menu to meet our guests’ changing expectations,” said John Betts, CEO of McDonald’s Canada, in a statement. McDonald’s Canada buys about 120 million eggs annually for a breakfast menu that includes products such as the Egg McMuffin, the company statement said.

“To meet the increased demand and ensure a sustainable supply of cage-free eggs, McDonald’s Canada will work with industry stakeholders to identify the best path forward, while continuing to work within the Canadian supply-management system,” the company statement said.

Demand statements from McDonald’s indicate the company consumes the eggs of about 400,000 laying hens annually, Egg Farmers of Ontario spokesman Bill Mitchell said in an interview. That’s roughly two per cent of the Canadian market and may indicate a trend for producers, he said.

However, Mitchell also defended conventional production systems which rely on cages to manage a variety of health and social issues among laying hens. He figures growers can meet new demand for cage-free production through regularly planned maintenance and reinvestment in facilities.

Given a 20-year life cycle for most housing systems, in any given year, five per cent of farmers will replace or update their facilities, Mitchell said.

Burnbrae Farms began introducing free-run cage-free systems 20 years ago to its operations, Hudson said in an interview from her Mississauga, Ont. office.

Drawing on farms as well as egg-grading and egg-breaking operations in five Canadian provinces, Burnbrae has supplied McDonald’s for more than 30 years, Hudson said. Burnbrae is owned and operated by members of the Hudson family and has produced eggs for 70 years from a home farm base at Lyn, Ont., near Brockville. However, family-owned facilities produce a relatively small percentage of the company’s total sales volume, more than 90 per cent of which comes from other growers.

For Margaret Hudson, the move to cage-free production is essentially a matter of consumer choice.

“There are pros and cons to every housing system so ultimately you need to understand the needs of that housing system. You need to train everyone that’s working in that housing system on those needs and you need to deliver consistently great, quality care,” Hudson said. “You can deliver quality care in any housing system,” she said.

Cage-free production systems yield a relatively small proportion of total egg production in Canada. Hudson estimated the current proportion of cage-free production at “less than 10 per cent.” Volume has grown in each of the past 15 years, however, and Hudson predicted “it will continue to grow.”

In 2014, Burnbrae announced a $500,000 gift to the University of Guelph to establish a professorship in poultry welfare in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science. A statement issued at the time said it would help fund research “to solve problems associated with alternative non-cage systems and to better understand the behaviour and biology of the laying hen.”

Alexandra Harlander, who took on the position, specializes in studying poultry behaviour and welfare. Harlander could not be reached for comment.

“There are customers out there who, regardless of anything, they just want eggs from a chicken that hasn’t been raised in confined housing,” Hudson said. “We’ve always provided choice and allowed the consumer to decide,” she said, acknowledging higher, cage-free labour and capital costs.

Cage-free production systems often mean fewer birds per barn, thus higher costs for labour and capital. The production system does not change the relatively high food value of eggs, Hudson argues.

“Eggs are the highest quality, lowest cost protein from any system,” the Burnbrae president said. “The environmental footprint of other proteins is higher than eggs from any system; they’re the highest quality protein, so ultimately, it is up to the choice of the consumer.”

“Our goal is to produce the highest quality eggs and to deliver great welfare in any system,” Hudson said.

Provincial marketing boards manage total egg production under Canada’s supply-management system but not the proportions of various housing techniques, Mitchell said. He referred to four existing systems in use in Ontario: conventional housing, aviary, free run and free range.

While the board manages total egg production, egg graders and farmers manage production systems among themselves depending on the needs of their customers. Changes implied by the volume described in McDonald’s announcement should be “quite manageable,” Mitchell said.

“Basically, egg farmers produce what their customers want,” he said.

“The move in the marketplace is more related to consumer perception than science; but it is consumer perception that we have to react to,” Mitchell said. BF