Cage Free Tracker
LATIN AMERICAN CAGE-FREE
TRACKER
REPORT
INTRODUCTION
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Cage
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Cage-free
In Latin America, the vast majority of hens are kept in battery cages for their entire lives. In these systems, animals can barely walk and spread their wings. They are forced to live without being able to carry out their natural behaviors and suffer from painful bone diseases due to the lack of movement. To change this reality, the NGO Sinergia Animal started to work with food companies in Latin America in the adoption of animal welfare policies to phase out cage systems gradually and transition to 100% cage-free supply chains.
There are over 240 companies committed to cage-free policies in all Latin American countries. Out of these 240, 63 companies have policies that apply to Latin America as a whole, or only to Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. We did not consider other policies that apply to countries such as Brazil and Mexico only.
Sinergia Animal has conducted a survey to check the progress of these 63 companies in transitioning to sourcing cage-free eggs on a national level in Chile, Colombia, and Argentina. For companies that have global policies, we asked them to report numbers for Latin America.
This work is essential. If these commitments are not fulfilled, the companies will bring no positive changes to the suffering that is well-documented for these animals. Sinergia Animal is strongly committed to ensuring that all companies work to complete their transition to only source cage-free eggs in the Latin American countries where it operates.
Sinergia Animal will produce yearly reports to state each company’s progress until they fully meet their commitments within their specific deadlines. The following sections will exhibit information shared by the companies in regard to their cage-free transition.
LEVEL OF PARTICIPATION
Out of the 63 companies that are committed, 10 have published their policies in less than six months since our survey started, so they were not contacted because we considered their lack of enough time to start the implementation.
For another 11 companies, our team could not find working contact details for them.
We got in touch with a total of 42 companies, which read and/or responded to our emails or spoke to our team over the phone. Out of the 42, 14 companies (33.3%) reported progress. Nine of them are from Colombia, two are from Chile and three are multinationals. No Argentinean company reported progress fully.
In the coming years, we want to see this situation changing dramatically. We hope that more companies will be willing to join our transparency program and share their progress in the next editions.
It’s important to mention that companies that announced commitments only six months prior to the initiation of this analysis will be contacted in the next annual report.
63
companies have cage-free
commitments that apply to
Chile, Argentina and
Colombia
11
companies out of 63
could not be reached
by our team
10
out of 63 policies were
published less then 6
months before the surveys
started, so they were not
included
42
14
5
23
out of 63 companies received our request to participate in the survey
out of 42 companies (33.3%) were transparent and reported progress
out of 42 companies (54.8%) were not transparent and did not respond
out of 42 companies (11.9%) responded but did not provide clear data
63
companies have cage-free
commitments that apply to
Chile, Argentina and
Colombia
11
companies out of 63
could not be reached
by our team
10
out of 63 policies were
published less than 6
months before the surveys
started, so they were not
included
42
14
6
22
out of 63 companies received our request to participate in the survey
out of 42 companies (33.3%) were transparent and reported progress
out of 42 companies (52.3%) were not transparent and did not respond
out of 42 companies (14.2%) responded but did not provide clear data
THE 14 COMPANIES THAT REPORTED PROGRESS
Multinational companies:
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Chilean companies:
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Colombian companies:
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THE 22 COMPANIES THAT did not respond
Argentinian companies:
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Chilean companies:
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Colombian companies:
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Multinational companies:
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THE 6 COMPANIES not declaring clear data
The companies listed below sent general information to Sinergia Animal but refrained from declaring their current usage of cage-free eggs in Latin America.
Chilean companies:
Multinational companies:
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* Aramark is still not able to report exact figures for Latin America, although it does report its progress globally.
THE 10 COMPANIES THAT
WERE NOT CONTACTED
The following companies published cage-free egg commitments less than six months prior to December 2019. We will invite them to participate in our next survey to give them enough time to start preparing for the implementation.
Argentinean companies and multinationals operating in Argentina:
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Chilean companies and multinationals operating in Chile:
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Multinationals operating in several Latin American countries:
PERCENTAGE OF CAGE-FREE EGGS SOURCED, AS REPORTED BY COMPANIES THAT RESPONDED TO THE SURVEY
As we can see in the chart above, most companies report that more than 90% of the fresh eggs they use are already cage-free. For Barilla, the transition has been 100% concluded for all egg types. For La Clementina, Colomer, Jeno’s Pizza, Mikaela, Oma, Presto, Servihoteles, and Vapiano (in Colombia), all of the fresh eggs that are used are cage-free.
Overall, the results show that more progress is being made in terms of the use of fresh eggs. In the future, we will try to determine whether other types of eggs are being used less or whether more effort has to be made to start the transition for processed eggsand eggs that are used as ingredients.
MORE Takeaways:
The report in numbers
Taking into account the egg usage per company and their respective commitment deadlines, we can anticipate that 2022 has the potential to start delivering substantial change for the egg market in Latin America.
Considering only companies reported progress in this edition, the total number of eggs they committed to use to complete their transition process until 2022 equals 253,000 units—more than double the number of eggs used by companies committed by 2025 (102,576 units).
It is important to note, however, that as more companies start to report progress, we expect this scenario to change. We will likely see higher volumes of eggs involved in these commitments in 2025 and 2028, as supermarkets have 2028 as their final deadline for non-exclusive brands.
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Egg usage per sector:
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Restaurant – 396,974
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Hotel – 316,000
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Coffee Shop – 56,000
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Bakery – 3,180
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Food Service – 3,000
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Fast Food – 1,050
Egg usage per
commitment deadline:
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2025 – 415,974
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2022 – 353,000
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2020 – 3,180
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2018 – 3,000
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2017 – 1,050
*Responses based on replies from 13 companies.
The companies participating in the program were also asked to share information about their internal-awareness plans to inform employees about their cage-free egg policies, their plans to identify suppliers and their concrete steps to start sourcing from cage-free egg suppliers. The results were positive for these two topics. More than 70% of the participants mentioned having plans to educate their staff and the general public about their policies. More than 90% of the companies said they had already identified and contacted cage-free egg suppliers.
Companies that identified suppliers
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12 companies
1company
Companies with awareness plans
9 companies
4 companies
challenges IDENTIFIED
We asked companies what challenges they believed to be hardest to overcome during
the cage-free transition process. Here are their perceptions:
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Five companies (36%) mentioned the higher costs of cage-free eggs in comparison with caged eggs.
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Three companies (21%) stated they were not having any challenges in the transition process.
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Two companies (14%) mentioned that there are not enough cage-free eggs available on the market.
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One company (7%) declared that it is hard to find processed cage-free eggs in their operating regions.
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One company (7%) said it is hard to find cage-free eggs in medium and small cities.
what's next
Sinergia Animal will keep following up with the companies participating in the program, in order to learn more from the different transition processes and to address questions and concerns that may arise. We will also be using our social media channels and working with national and regional media outlets to give full transparency about companies that are or are not informing the public about their progress.
