Decades of welfare science have transformed understanding of laying hen needs, driving regulatory change and demonstrating what genuinely good welfare looks like for these complex birds.
The science of laying hen welfare has advanced to a point where we understand their needs in considerable detail and have the tools to measure whether those needs are met. Hens are cognitively complex birds capable of referential communication, episodic memory and empathic responses. These capacities mean that confinement in environments that prevent dustbathing, nesting, perching and foraging causes measurable psychological harm. The trajectory from battery cages to enriched cages to cage-free and free-range systems represents genuine moral progress driven by scientific evidence. Continuing this trajectory requires consumer choice, regulatory requirements and industry investment in genuinely higher-welfare systems.