Last week’s Digest was about chickens. This week it’s about eggs and it’s about bacon. And holding those together? Probably another bit of bacon if M&S has anything to do with it (wait for it…).
First up, Compassion in World Farming’s Eggtrack report showing that UK companies are “leading the way” on cage-free eggs: 77% of the UK market is already cage-free (versus 70% in France, 66% in Italy and 30% in Poland).
Forty companies are included in the UK spotlight with 19 of them considered ‘leaders’ (among them foodservice companies Burger King UK, Compass Group UK&I, Costa Coffee, Greggs, J D Wetherspoon, KFC UK&I, McDonald’s UK, Papa Johns UK, Pizza express, Pizza Hut UK, Pret A Manger, Shake Shack and the Restaurant Group). Those ‘in progress’ (and probably going to meet their 2025 cage-free commitment deadline) include Booker, The Big Table Group and Whitbread.
There are plenty in the ‘at risk’ (of missing their target having only transitioned 80% or so of their eggs) group: Ask Restaurants, Azzurri Group, Bidfood UK, Elior UK, Greencore Group and Prezzo Restaurants. The laggards, who haven’t reported or have simply dropped away, include Greene King. Supermarkets are included in the assessment too.
Also published is a letter from CIWF, and signed by eight of the food companies, to Defra secretary Steve Reed calling for “the phasing out of cages for laying hens”. Around 4 million laying hens will still be in cages next year, due to legislation not keeping pace with industry efforts.
Meeting the cage-free commitment is a breeze compared to the Better Chicken Commitment. The industry has moved slowly but steadily towards cage-free eggs but BCC’s tighter, more ambitious rules for chickens reared for meat have, as we reported last week, already seen some give up on meeting their ambitions on the use of slower-growing breeds (protestors from The Humane League headed to KFC HQ in Woking this week to voice their doubts about its commitment to chicken welfare and to demand that a new deadline is set for meeting the BCC standards).
The number of companies who have signed up to the Commitment, or are aligning with some of the guidelines, is seemingly growing faster than the birds themselves. This is good news for the birds. However, the race is on to secure supplies in a strained market, noted Poultry Business. It is all rather chaotic, with retailers just jumping in when they feel like it. And with supermarkets sucking up more of the ‘sustainable’ supplies there will be even more of a pinch on foodservice firms who want some of those better chickens.
BCC is a “frequent request” noted Avara Foods (the processor faced with problems around sites located near the perniciously-polluted River Wye) in its just-published ESG update. “Over the course of the remainder of this year and into 2025, more of our farms will plan to stock to 30kg per square metre, well below EU (42kg), UK (39kg) and Red Tractor (38kg) standards. We will continue to rear our standard chicken on these farms, the Ross 308, as this will enable us to balance improvements in welfare against environmental footprint, which is much higher for ECC approved breeds.”
Sticking with a fast-growing breed is significant: Ross 308 is the most popular breed in Europe yet isn’t within the breeds the BCC wants companies to use (KFC’s issues stem from the lack of availability of slower-growing breeds). More than 380 businesses in the UK and EU have committed to the BCC so far, including Greggs, Waitrose, Nando’s, Burger King, Subway and Marks & Spencer, so expect a fair few more to backtrack in the coming months.
Speaking of M&S brings us to our bacon bite: the retailer has announced a “gamechanger” this Christmas with its ever-popular ‘pigs in blankets’ now wrapped in a whole rasher of bacon rather than half of one. Double the (processed) meat, in other words. How this impacts carbon emissions we know not (but we can take a guess); nor does M&S seem to care: “[…] all M&S pigs in blankets are made with outdoor bred British pork and dry cured artisan bacon”.
Also on the topic of pigs, it’s worth noting The Guardian’s report this week on the pollution problems created by Mexico’s mega pig farms. “More than 90% of the 800 pig factories estimated to exist in Yucatán operate without any type of environmental permit,” Lourdes Medina Carrillo, an environmental lawyer, told the paper.
In the UK we have permits for those farms with more than 2,000 pigs (or 40,000 chickens), but that doesn’t appear to have stymied the mayhem caused by all the muck created. There are a “complex set” of environmental factors to consider, said Sustain campaigner Ruth Westcott in an interview with BBC Radio 4, and that includes the part these farms play in river pollution. The farmers are not to blame, mind, it is the big processors behind them, she said, adding: “Intensive livestock has a much higher emissions profile than other sources of protein.”
Which brings us to our other stories this week. Proveg International research shows the nutritional profile of plant-based meat products is (slightly) better overall than that of their animal-based equivalents. In Brussels, the European Commission was told to do better on food labelling laws, which are currently lacking, allowing companies to mislead and fool shoppers. We also have an update on the plastics treaty talks as they enter their final days.
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