Disinformation on Aisle One: Ahold Delhaize Customers are Misled by Egg Cartons

By: Isa Alomran and Grace Adcox

With concerns about food safety, quality, and animal treatment on the rise in the U.S., the shift toward cage-free egg production has rapidly accelerated over the last decade. According to USDA data, the percentage of hens raised in cage-free systems has grown from just about 9.6% in 2012 to over 40% in 2024. Driven by state laws and corporate purchasing policies, this figure is projected to possibly reach 75% by 2025.

Companies like McDonald's and Costco are at the forefront of this shift, with McDonald’s having achieved 100% cage-free eggs in 2023 and over 90% of Costco’s eggs being cage-free; hundreds of others have also achieved, or are on the way to reaching, their goals too. 

Additionally, 10 states — from deeply blue states like California and Massachusetts to a deeply red one like Utah — have passed laws banning the production (and, in most cases, the sale) of eggs from caged chickens.

Confined to “battery cages,” chickens spend their lives crammed into spaces roughly the size of a microwave, preventing them from engaging in critical natural behaviors such as dust bathing, perching, and nest laying. The shift toward cage-free egg production reflects broader societal and consumer shifts in attitudes toward animal welfare and sustainable farming practices. But indeed, animal welfare doesn’t just impact animals — it also impacts the products people eat.

For example, the Center for Food Safety says, “Animal welfare and food safety are intrinsically linked, which makes sense: sick animals produce sick food.” It continues: “Confining animals indoor and packing them into dense living conditions creates a number of serious hazards for animal welfare. Animals often live among their own waste and carcasses … This crowded, toxic environment is conducive to virulent strains of bacteria.” Such confinement, it concludes, is simply not an “intelligent way to produce our nation’s … animal products.”

And a 2023 study conducted by the Prestage Department of Poultry Science at North Carolina State University that evaluated physical egg quality parameters of commercial hens housed in cage and cage-free systems found that “housing environment had a highly significant effect on most physical egg quality parameters” and  that caged hens “produce the worst-quality eggs according to consumer and industry preferences.”

The trajectory away from caging chickens is perhaps unsurprising, with the practice having drawn public and regulatory scrutiny for decades.

The public’s increasing awareness of these conditions, spurred by extensive media coverage and undercover exposés, has ignited significant corporate and legislative actions. This evolution in egg production from restrictive caging systems to more humane, cage-free environments not only reflects a shift in production practices but also underscores a broader societal move toward more ethical and sustainable agricultural practices in the United States.

Ahold Delhaize

In 2020, Ahold Delhaize, which owns large grocery store chains across the eastern U.S. (including Food Lion and Giant), announced a commitment to exclusively sell cage-free eggs by 2025 or sooner.

The company stated in 2023 that “we believe supporting animal welfare is the right thing to do.” It also expressed an understanding that “farm animal welfare is connected to food safety, due to the close links between space provided to animals and their health. Higher stocking densities require a higher usage of antimicrobials to keep the animals healthy, which may lead to antibiotic-resistant pathogens for humans.”

However, in that report, the company also stated that “we do not expect to achieve our ambition of 100% cage-free eggs in 2025. The rate of supplier transition in some regions is slower than expected, and we want our brands to continue to be able to offer customers healthy and affordable protein options. Our plan and targets will be updated in 2024.”

Given Ahold Delhaize’s strategy shift, Data for Progress set out to explore how the company’s customers feel about this topic. To that end, Data for Progress conducted a survey from May 9 to 16, 2024 of 694 Ahold Delhaize customers throughout the company’s various banners. The critical findings include: 1) customers are misled into thinking egg cartons sold at Ahold Delhaize containing eggs from caged chickens are cage-free; 2) customers overwhelmingly support clear, color-coded markers identifying which eggs come from caged chickens; 3) customers are more likely to buy the company’s private label eggs if those eggs were exclusively cage-free; and 4) customers do indeed express strong preferences about the treatment of chickens from which eggs are sourced. 

The full details of the polling are in the report below.