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Tim Hortons, Milestones and Harvey’s promise cage-free eggs

Want to get your morning egg burger without a heavy helping of guilt? Tim Hortons, the largest coffee chain in Canada, and CARA, the nation’s largest restaurant group (owner of Harvey’s, Milestones, Swiss Chalet, Kelsey’s and East Side Mario’s) have just committed to switching to 100 per cent cage-free eggs. So have the Egg Farmers of Canada, sort of. 

Thing is, it’s going to take up to 20 years.

Following intense lobbying by Mercy for Animals (MFA), Tim’s and CARA agreed to drop the battery hens from their supply chains by 2025 and 2020, respectively. 

Not to be left with egg on its face and choking on bad PR, the Egg Farmers of Canada followed suit by announcing its members would stop installing any new battery cages. Instead of promising to go cage-free they’re promising to begin shifting existing farms to “enriched” cages, which Mercy for Animals says are only marginally better. Either way, that shift won’t be complete for – wait for it – another 20 years.

MFA president Nathan Runkle called the timeline “simply outrageous” in a statement. 

Runkle is urging the egg farmers group, which represents more than 1,000 commercial farms across the country, to update its policy and -expedite its timeline. 

“In the 20 years the industry says it needs to transition to more humane facilities, millions more hens will suffer in tiny cages that prevent them from walking freely or spreading their wings,” says Barb Cartwright of the Canadian Federation of Humane-Societies.

At this point, an estimated 90 per cent of Canadian eggs are laid by battery-caged hens crammed into spaces the size of a sheet of paper. The CFHS says many other countries, including 28 members of the EU, have already “phased out barren cages in favour of more humane housing systems such as cage-free barns.”

These announcements are the latest in a wave of animal welfare commitments by Starbucks, Subway, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and nearly 100 other major restaurants, retailers, food -manufacturers and food service-companies, says MFA. 

ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation

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