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Share of egg production that is cage-free

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Share of egg production that is cage-free
Share of all eggs that are produced in cage-free housing systems. This includes barns, pasture and free-range (non-organic and organic) eggs.
Source
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom (2023); The Humane League based on the United States Department of Agriculture (2023) – processed by
Last updated
August 3, 2023
Date range
1996–2022
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom (Defra) runs a quarterly survey of registered UK egg packing stations. It is a voluntary sample survey of 27 respondents that collects information on throughput by production type and prices of graded eggs and sales of ungraded eggs. The response rate is typically 100 per cent and the survey accounts for 75 per cent of eggs packed in the UK. The survey figures are raised up to give UK estimates using information on the number of commercial laying hens, average egg yields, average mortality rates, the proportion of UK eggs that go through packing stations. Throughput by egg type for packing stations not surveyed is calculated using data provided by packing stations responding to the survey.

Retrieved on
August 1, 2023
Retrieved from
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by . To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Quarterly UK statistics on Egg Packing Station Throughput and Prices, by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom.

This project synthesizes data on the supply of cage-free eggs relative to all food eggs in the United States using United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data from December 2007 to present. The associated report supplements the data with definitions and a taxonomy of egg products drawn from USDA and industry publications.

Retrieved on
August 3, 2023
Retrieved from
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by . To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The Humane League based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

How we process data at

All data and visualizations on rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across .

Notes on our processing step for this indicator

For the United States, we approximate the share of eggs by the share of hens (for which there is more data available); the difference is expected to be smaller than 10%.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by , please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of egg production that is cage-free”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Animal Welfare”. Data adapted from Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom, The Humane League. Retrieved from /grapher/eggs-cage-free [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom (2023); The Humane League based on the United States Department of Agriculture (2023) – processed by

Full citation

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom (2023); The Humane League based on the United States Department of Agriculture (2023) – processed by . “Share of egg production that is cage-free” [dataset]. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom, “UK egg statistics”; The Humane League, “US egg production” [original data]. Retrieved April 30, 2025 from /grapher/eggs-cage-free