Burger King will get 100% of it's food from completely cage-free animals by 2017. It costs an extra 25 cents to 40 cents per dozen to produce cage-free eggs.

It’s no secret that animals destined for the dinner plate are generally not treated very well. This is largely thanks to various campaigns to illuminate this subject, and now the push is for better treatment.

Burger King is taking a huge step to increase the living conditions of animals.

They currently get 9% of their eggs and 20% of their pork from cage-free animals. Burger King isn’t the only fast food chain to use cage-free products, but they are taking it further than anyone else. The plan is to be 100% cage-free by 2017.

This doesn’t come without cost to Burger King. They will be spending an extra 25 cents to 40 cents per dozen to produce cage-free eggs. Multiply that by the literally billions of dozens of eggs they use every year and you can see that they are taking a significant financial hit in order to do the right thing and cater to those who demand humanely produced food.

Farms now have the option to switch to cage-free production, but without their customers pushing for it, they have no reason to. It will cost them money as well.

"Our attitude is our producers believe in consumer choice and if that's what their consumers want to buy, they'll produce cage-free eggs for the marketplace provided the customer is willing to pay the additional cost," said Gene Gregory, chief executive of the farm group United Egg Producers.

(Source)