Corporate cage-free commitments and legislative changes are driving the transition away from enriched cages for laying hens. Understanding the welfare gains, gaps and challenges of this transition is essential.
The cage-free transition represents real welfare progress for hundreds of millions of hens, but it is not the end of the welfare challenge - it is a step on a longer journey. Cage-free systems give hens the freedom to perform natural behaviours (perching, dustbathing, wing-spreading) that are impossible in cages. But they also introduce risks that intensive cage systems did not: keel bone fractures from perch use, feather pecking and cannibalism from higher-density flocking, and disease transmission. The welfare goal is not 'cage-free' as a label, but genuinely better welfare outcomes measured behaviourally. Achieving this requires continued improvement of cage-free system design alongside the transition.