UK retailers Iceland Foods and Morrisons have both announced plans to end the sale of eggs from caged hens in their stores by 2025.

Iceland said its decision followed “customer feedback and extensive consultations with the company’s egg suppliers, which have confirmed the feasibility of moving entirely to alternative barn and free range egg production methods within this timescale”.

Joint managing director Nigel Broadhurst said: “Today it is clear that our customers would prefer to buy eggs from non-caged hens, so long as we can deliver these without compromising the outstanding value they expect from us. Having consulted with our egg suppliers, I am confident that we can achieve this by 2025 – and if it proves feasible to complete the changeover sooner than that, we certainly will.”

Morrisons told just-food: “We have been listening hard to our customers about eggs from caged hens. Today we are making a commitment that by 2025 all our eggs will be from non-caged hens.”

Iceland and Morrisons are following moves by other UK high street stores. Earlier this month, Tesco pledged to stop selling eggs from caged hens by 2025. Aldi made the same pledge as Tesco earlier this year.

Waitrose only sells free range and organic eggs, while Sainsbury’s stopped selling whole caged eggs in 2009 and stopped using them as an ingredient in 2012.

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