Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what the egg-laying hen population in the UK is; how many of those are kept in caged systems; what proportion of eggs laid in the UK come from caged hens; and what progress has been made on reducing the use of cages for hens.

According to Defra’s official statistics on livestock populations in the United Kingdom, from June 2024 the total number of egg-laying hens (including breeding birds) was 54.6 million birds. Of these, 41.9 million were laying hens and pullets for table egg production.

Eggs produced from hens in enriched ‘colony’ cage systems accounted for 20% of the total egg throughput in Q4 2024. We do not hold figures on the number of egg-laying hens kept in caged systems.

We remain firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. The use of cages for laying hens is an issue which we are currently considering very carefully.