A barren past

At last, we could be seeing the end of the battery hen farm. EU animal welfare standards are coming into force this week to ban conventional "barren" battery cages from 2012, and Agriculture minister Elliot Morley has given his support to campaigners who say we should end the practice for good.

This is good news for hens and good news for consumers. We've ignored the cruel conditions endured by factory-farmed poultry for too long. The fact that companies including McDonald's and Marks & Spencer have already banned battery-produced eggs gives us encouragement, as does the fact that we buy almost five times as many free-range eggs as we did 10 years ago. But the legislation must be fairly enforced across the EU so as not to penalise British producers who improve their standards of animal husbandry, a costly lesson that our pig farmers had to learn. We look forward to a cruelty-free future.