Cage eggs will be banned in Denmark

Just the other day Anima Denmark visited the minister of agriculture in order to hand him more than 54.000 signatures from supporters of a cage egg ban in Denmark. During the meeting he aired his intention of finally banning the production of cage eggs while allowing a 12 year period for the phaseout. Now it is publicly announced and in the process of being implemented.

Even though we won, it should be safe to say that all of us had been hoping for a significantly shorter timeline.  Therefore we will continue our effort to try and push the tempo by advocating for financial support for farmers to transition into a plant based market. We will also explore the possibility of establishing legal demands regarding increments to the animal welfare of caged egg laying hens or imposing a tax on cage eggs.

It is apparent that the illegality of shutting down the mink farming industry in the midst of the corona pandemic is still causing some anxiety within the government. It seems that the Danish government is hellbent on steering clear of anything that might have even the slightest ring of expropriation to it. A phase out spanning 12 years is estimated by the justice department to secure the government exactly that.

It’s been quite the long haul, but during a decade of campaigning for this ban in Denmark, we’ve seen some significant victories. To mention one Anima was the spearhead in persuading all of the supermarket chains to adopt cage free policies and commit to phasing out cage eggs. It was actually all the way back in 2016 that the last supermarket chain chose to side with us and all of the caged hens.

Since then especially the shifting governments have been dragging their feet, but now the minister of agriculture is finally on the move. And the timing is terrific, since the Parliament elections are right around the corner. The majority of members in the Danish Parliament had already approved of banning the cage egg production, but the remaining issue was to arrive at a timeline of the phase out. Now we won’t have to wait and see how big of a setback a possible shift in political power could have caused the remaining 500.000 caged hens. Instead we know for certain that the hens will be free in the future. Hopefully sooner than later.