Mondelez International latest to make cage-free egg pledge

Mondelez International has become the latest packaged food company to make a pledge to source only cage-free eggs for its products.

The snack maker joins Nestle and General Mills in announcing commitments in the area in recent months.

It said today (15 January) it would only use cage-free eggs in the US and Canada by 2020. The Cadbury maker said its operations in Europe would only use the eggs by 2025. Mondelez said it already uses cage-free eggs for the chocolate it sells in Europe. The Oreo owner said the biscuits it sells in Belgium and the Netherlands also only contain the more animal-friendly eggs.

“Meaningful commitments such as these take time, in both planning and implementation, but we’re very pleased to announce this major step forward in our cage-free sourcing,” Jonathan Horrell, Mondelez’s director of sustainability, said.

“We ultimately want all eggs to be produced cage-free, and we’ll continue to advance conversations with suppliers to establish timelines for cage-free production in other regions, when we have evidence that commercially viable supplies are available.”

Last month, Nestle announced a pledge to only use cage-free eggs in its food sold in the US by 2020.

In November, General Mills set a deadline of 2025 for its US business to only use cage-free eggs.

A month earlier, Kellogg, the owner of vegetarian food brand Morningstar Farms, announced plans to only use the eggs by the end of 2025.